


Renegades

by inkdust



Series: Renegades [1]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hollywood Ending, Post Season 2, alternating pov, peggysous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-27 14:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 45,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6288346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkdust/pseuds/inkdust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, Peggy & Daniel Against the World</p><p>The real world doesn't have a Hollywood ending. In fact it doesn't even pause. But they're a team.<br/>A wonderful team.<br/>Post-finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ATTENTION / ACHTUNG!
> 
> This is now Part I of a two-part continuous series, of which Part II is not yet written. This fic doesn't end with the worst cliffhanger in the world, but it is very much Frodo-and-Sam-set-off-for-Mordor and not the-ring-is-destroyed.
> 
> I hope to write Part II when I have the time, but I will not be posting any of it until the whole fic is finished.
> 
> In the meantime, if you're up for reading Part I as it stands, please enjoy! I am very fond of it.

In the end, he had to fight for her. He just didn’t realize until she pounced on him that he had done it.

_Peggy, Peggy, Peggy,_ thrummed like a chant in his head. She could crack a man’s jaw with her fist and pick a lock with her eyes closed, but she kissed better than either one. 

And that sound she made as she pulled him closer, that little muffled sound that he had never dreamed he’d hear from Peggy Carter. 

(That was a lie. He’d dreamed it, but he woke up aching and hard.) 

Daniel wasn’t sure what he had expected to goad her into—at least one more moment of that back-and-forth that made his heart race, one more moment before she got on that plane. But, hell, if she wanted to do _this_ —

She drew back, her eyes darting over his face. Waiting for him. Waiting for what?

Words.

_You got nothin’ to say?_

“Good point.”

That smile. A new one, brighter and gentler. That smile, and those eyes, and she was kissing him again. When Peggy Carter made a decision… Daniel wrapped his arms around her. They didn’t need a Chief for the afternoon, did they?

_Hold my calls, Rose._

“Oh my.”

Rose.

Peggy pulled away with a start. Her floundering attempt to climb off his lap nearly tipped them out of the chair again, and Daniel had to grab her hips to steady them. He squeezed his eyes shut. Wonderful. This was so professional.

“Chief…” Rose cleared her throat. “So sorry to intrude, but Chief Thompson is on the line…about getting Peggy to her flight.”

Since when did Rose need to show up in person? When Daniel could bring himself to open his eyes, her face was the cat who had eaten not one but five canaries. Thank God she had closed the door to the bullpen.

“Thank you, Rose,” he managed.

“Or…not getting Peggy to her flight.”

“Thank you, Rose,” he repeated louder.

The door shut again, and he looked back at Peggy. She had her hand pressed to her mouth and—

“Are you _giggling_?”

“I don’t giggle,” she said behind her hand, but it sounded about as convincing as the possum locked in her trunk. She nodded at the phone. “Yours.”

Daniel heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Jack,” he answered. Peggy shifted as if to climb off his lap, but he tightened his hold on her hip.

_“Hey, Chief, are you wrapped up yet? Carter said she’d call.”_

He couldn’t stop a smirk as Peggy twined her arms around his neck. _Carter’s busy._ “Yeah…we’re, uh...”

What _were_ they doing? He should have asked before he picked up the phone. Because if she still intended to get on that plane— Daniel glanced at her for a clue, but she leaned over the desk and picked up his pen.

She found the reminder he had jotted down a lifetime ago and started adding something at the end.

_Peggy—vacation days? + + +_

He felt himself grinning like an idiot. “Turns out we’ve got more to deal with than I thought. So if she has any vacation left…might have to take an advance…”

_“She’s taking_ more _vacation?”_

Daniel snaked his arm around her waist. “Let’s just play it by ear.”

_“Well, I guess I’m flying back alone.”_

“You could always stick around L.A.” Daniel covered the mouthpiece when Peggy smacked his shoulder. They exchanged a brief pantomimed conversation where Daniel was under the impression he was being threatened with bodily harm, but he wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t enjoy it.

_“…All right, they’re throwing me out. I gotta go. I’m leaving!”_ he heard Jack call faintly. _“Just give me a second!”_ The receiver must have bounced off the cradle when he hung up.

Daniel offered the phone to Peggy. “Sure you don’t want to say goodbye?”

“I swear to God, Daniel—”

A sharp sound made them both freeze.

“Was that…?”

Daniel put the phone to his ear. “Jack?”

The other end was silent.

Peggy snatched the receiver. “ _Jack?_ ” She rummaged through the papers on the desk. “What was his room number?”

“Rose has it.”

Peggy bolted off his lap and grabbed his crutch from the hook. “You heard it too. Didn’t that sound like…?”

“Yeah.” Daniel took the crutch grimly. “It did.”

Jacobs stood up when Peggy dashed through the bullpen. “Chief?”

“Send an ambulance to Chief Thompson’s hotel. Then follow us.” Daniel hauled himself after her as fast as he could, growing more certain by the second. If his gut and Peggy’s gut said the same thing…

From the office they would make it there before the ambulance. Better that way, to secure the area. Daniel focused on the protocol. Secure. Stabilize. Cover the exits.

There was no one in sight when they parked in the alley. Peggy drew her weapon and ran for the side door.

Daniel made his way around to the front. “Be safe,” he whispered. It was meant for Peggy, but it wasn’t not meant for Jack.

No one caught his attention in the street. But it could have been anyone. The man buying a newspaper, the woman pushing a carriage. Daniel knew all too well not to trust a baby carriage.

Or it could have been none of them. Maybe he and Peggy had misheard. Maybe they were both wrong. It was possible. He hoped to God it was possible.

The ambulance pulled up, and he focused on the protocol.

When he reached the second floor hallway, he heard voices, but his gaze landed on Peggy.

_Unhurt._ He felt an instinctive flash of relief. Then she turned at the click of his crutch, and he saw the way she was holding her hands stiffly in front of her.

“Oh, God.”

“He was breathing,” she whispered when Daniel took her wrist. Her palms were slick red.

In unison the medical team counted to three, and he looked up to see them lift Jack onto a stretcher.

“Still is,” Daniel murmured. Jack would fight. If they hadn’t drawn the sheet over his face, he was fighting.

“I couldn’t look around in the room.” Peggy’s tone reminded him of the night of the Roxxon implosion, businesslike and brittle. “I couldn’t see if anything was taken. Something must have—”

“We’ll look. I’ll go in, when they get him…”

After the stretcher cleared the doorway, Daniel edged inside. He stepped around the dark splotch on the carpet, forcing himself not to measure it. Jack’s suitcase lay open on the bed, jacket draped beside it, another bag zipped up. Nothing rifled through.

Daniel turned at the sound of footsteps in the hall.

“Chief?” Agent Jacobs.

“Take all of this. Photos if you’ve got a camera. If not, just get it to the lab. Don’t let it out of your sight.”

Daniel pressed his handkerchief into Peggy’s hands. What little he could offer.

\---

They sat side by side in the waiting room, silent. Doctors and nurses strode past, back and forth down the halls, none with any news for them. The hours ticked by.

Rose was there for a while, and then Jarvis, telling Peggy he had taken her suitcases back to Stark’s house. Jacobs reported that Thompson’s were in the lab, fully documented and being dusted for fingerprints. Copies of everything would be left on Daniel’s desk.

No, Rose said, they didn’t need him at the office yet. Stay here with Peg.

He could do that. Questions were beginning to rise in the back of his mind, ugly questions and uglier answers, but it wasn’t time to ask them. He couldn’t push himself beyond the squeak of shoes on linoleum and the phones ringing somewhere and the growing cramp in his leg. He should move from his seat, but he didn’t want to let go of Peggy’s hand.

It sounded twisted in his head to think that this was what they shared, what they had always shared. Pain and loss. But it wasn’t just that. It was pain, and loss, and the determination not to be defined by it. Not to stop working. Not to leave each other behind.

He had tried. By God, he had tried. He had clung to those hours between them like a shield. But Peggy didn’t hesitate at a shield.

Or a crutch.

“They all die, Daniel.”

His head jerked up.

Peggy’s gaze was fixed straight ahead, the fluorescent lights glinting off her eyes. She flexed her free hand in her lap, stiffly, as if she had never washed it clean. “Everyone around me dies.”

He stared at her. “Peggy.”

She shook her head, glancing down and then up, like she didn’t know where to settle. “You can’t deny there’s a pattern.”

“He’s still in surgery.”

Her lips pressed together. That wasn’t the point, and he knew it. But she didn’t pull her hand away.

Those were the things to trust with Peggy. Her hand in his. Her hands, refusing to let go.

None of them had let go. Stark, Thompson, even Wilkes. They were right behind her.

“You know the pattern I see?” Daniel asked quietly.

She didn’t look at him, but he saw her head tilt a fraction, listening.

“I see people choose to rally around you. For you.” He stroked his thumb over her knuckles. “Come on—Peg. You got _Jack Thompson_ taking your dinner order.”

Her cheek twitched in the slightest smile. “That was a sight.”

“And Stark, Jarvis, Ana—”

Peggy stiffened.

“That’s their choice, Peg. They’re all making that choice. And they’re as damn lucky to have you as you are to have them.”

A moment passed, and then Peggy’s head turned. Her brow was pinched, her eyes shining in the light, but she held his gaze. She drew in a shaky breath. “I don’t think that’s quite true.”

Before Daniel could argue, she leaned in to rest her head on his shoulder, lacing their fingers together. And he realized Peggy wasn’t talking about herself at all.

\---

Later, after they moved from the bench in the waiting room to the chairs beside Jack’s bed, they started to confront the ugly questions. Privately at first, nothing said out loud. But then Jack woke up for the first time, and he knew his name and recognized their faces. And with that question allayed, the ugly ones only swarmed higher.

“Hit man,” Jack had whispered—when had he become “Jack,” anyway?—before he slipped back under. No surprise. It had played out like a hit. That just led Peggy and Daniel to the next unspoken question.

They were comfortable with the unspoken. In New York, working quietly together had been a retreat, as the other agents bantered and ragged on each other more loudly and crudely than necessary. Here, without anyone they hoped to escape, the quiet felt like trust.

Peggy stood at the window, deep in thought, her face lit up by the evening sun. Beautiful, Daniel couldn’t help thinking.

He would have to be careful. He had swallowed down his feelings for so long, their release threatened to drown him. But there was something in her expression when she looked at him now that he hadn’t seen in New York. Something soft, and so unlike Agent Peggy Carter. It felt like the first taste of a Peggy few people got to know.

That knowing would have to come in bits and pieces. Stolen kisses, stolen moments. Because their work wasn’t done, and the work would never be done. The fight would never be done.

This was what they shared.

“I’ve thought it out,” Peggy said finally. She returned to the chair beside him. “What we know: Dottie Underwood wouldn’t have left him alive. That leaves someone in the Arena Club, or someone in Vernon Masters’ corner of the SSR.”

Daniel’s ribs ached with the memory of fists as he took a deep breath. “I think those are the same someone.”

Peggy nodded. “Yes.” She pulled something from a slit in the belt of her dress and held it out in front of them. “So do I.”

“Another Arena Club pin?”

“Jack took it from Masters’ briefcase. And he found something we missed.” She twisted, and a pair of metal teeth extended from the side. “A key, apparently. To what, I’ve no idea.”

Daniel weighed it in his hand, ran his thumb along the edge. “We’ll find out.”

“Daniel.” Her voice was barely audible, like she didn’t want to hear herself say it. “The SSR is compromised.”

He closed his eyes, letting the words sink in.

“Which we knew,” she added. “But we didn’t fully know—”

“—How deep it goes.”

Peggy’s gaze traveled over the bandages across Jack’s shoulder. “We still don’t know. This is a monster without a face.”

If only Jack had recognized the shooter. If only he could give them _something._

Daniel watched the rise and fall of Jack’s chest under the sheet. Take a thousand different hospital beds, and every single one would remind him of his own. Not the last bed, through the months of rehabilitation, but the first one he could remember. The memory wasn’t anchored in a real place—he didn’t know if it was in a field hospital or in transit, if he still had his leg or not, because it had all felt the same then—but every bed called it back. Thin sheets and morphine injections, the smell of the room as he lay still, hour after hour after hour, caught between death and something a little less than death.

The SSR had found him in the last hospital bed. Had looked at his leg, then looked him in the eye. And he had known where he needed his crutches to carry him. Where he was meant to be. What he was meant to do.

He looked at Peggy. “You and me, then.”

Her eyebrows lifted in a question.

“We hunt them down, from the inside out. No record, no communication that isn’t face to face. We find out how deep it goes.”

Peggy’s eyes held his, dark and deep. That softness was there, but it was twined with steel. “Together.”

Daniel held out his hand. “Together.”

She took his hand, left in right. Not a handshake. Hands clasped at the edge of a precipice, side by side.

_On the count of three._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never posted fic, but this vision wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote at least the beginning of Peggy and Daniel rooting out corruption with their silent words-in-glances.
> 
> Title after Renegades by X Ambassadors, which I hear as the soundtrack to the operation.
> 
> Until now I've only been gazing into the Peggysous corner with my hands pressed to the glass, but I have to credit the lovely Paeonia for entirely shaping my headcanon for Daniel's history. I'm sure others have influenced my portrayals in various ways. So many excellent stories.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't lie - pretty much half of this chapter is sex. But...figuring out a relationship, right? Right. I never labeled this as gen fic.

“If that’s what you wanna do, Marge.”

Jack was breathing well now, breathing and moving well enough that his release was no longer hypothetical, but he still didn’t seem to feel the need to keep his eyes open for a conversation. Between complaints of boredom, he made the hospital suit him, much as he made any room suit him.

“We need to know what’s going on in New York,” Peggy said.

They needed to know days ago. Initially Daniel had gotten through to Agent Ramirez, informing the office of Jack’s condition, but his last three calls had been turned away, messages unanswered.

Daniel had asked her to wait. _“If you storm over there before Thompson’s even sitting up, it’ll look like you’re abandoning him. You’re effectively a liaison right now.”_

_“Then why has no one contacted me?”_

He didn’t have an answer for that.

But she had waited, because sometimes Daniel’s angle was wiser. Then the time for waiting had run out.

“Let me know when you find out.” Jack waved a hand in the air. “Not going anywhere. Well, actually—” his eyes slitted open and he shot Daniel a smirk “—I’ll be even easier to reach. One stop shop.”

Daniel drew in a measured breath that said, _Don’t remind me_.

“Hey, you don’t have to take me. Rose offered her guest room too.”

“I’m not gonna put you on Rose,” Daniel muttered.

Jack’s grin widened as he closed his eyes again. “Always the martyr.”

“And I’m not going to put her in danger when someone comes to finish the job.”

Peggy touched Daniel’s arm. The morphine had kept Jack from asking much about the official investigation. Continuing the unofficial investigation would be easier if they kept it that way.

“I don’t know how long I’ll stay,” she said to bring the subject back. “It may be some time.” She felt Daniel’s gaze on her but couldn’t bring herself to return it.

“Well, don’t hurry back on my account. I bet Sousa makes a swell nurse. Just gotta get him a cap.”

She rolled her eyes at Daniel, but his expression didn’t lighten. She had seen a lot of that look over the past couple of days, reluctant and heavy, mainly when he thought she wasn’t looking.

_A three-hour time difference feels like a lifetime._

Peggy set her jaw. _Don’t make this harder than it is._

“If you two are making moony eyes at each other, I don’t need to be here for that.”

“I am in no way ‘moony,’ thank you.”

When Jack’s eyes opened, Peggy realized he had caught her distracted. Acknowledging the comment at all said enough. Unlike Mr. Jarvis, Jack knew that her vacation wasn’t a consequence of the gunshot. But he hadn’t speculated to their faces, and she wasn’t about to invite him to start. Certainly not with Daniel so on edge tonight.

Peggy cleared her throat. “They’re going to ask us to leave, and I have to finish packing.”

“Safe flight, Marge.”

“I thought you were done packing,” Daniel said as they started down the hall.

“Yes, well.” She wouldn’t admit to being flustered, even if he could tell. “What I am is starving.”

And exhausted, but that was the normal mode of existence in Los Angeles. After the past week—night after frustrating night in Daniel’s office, slipping back in after the other agents had gone home, combing through every folder that could possibly relate to the Arena Club, or could relate to something else that could relate to the so-called Council of Nine. But the L.A. files lacked history, and none of them so much as hinted at the length of the arms that reached across the country and back. Another reason to go to New York.

_If that’s what you wanna do, Marge._

The most frustrating thing was that it wasn’t. Not entirely. Not when she had no idea whether she would walk into a mess or a trap. In either case, communication would be tricky, and none of the ears in the New York office could be trusted. Even Rose was here in L.A. And Peggy had no idea whether she would be on her own for three weeks or three months.

When had she ever minded working alone?

“Peg? You okay?”

She found herself standing beside Daniel’s car, almost black in the dusk. “Yes, fine. Just tired.”

“Thought you were starving.”

“Both, I suppose. Anything but another night of cold tacos.”

Daniel’s hand flexed around his crutch. “Should I just drive you back to Stark’s, then? You should rest for tomorrow.”

That made her look at him. Even now, the work came first. And she had no energy left to reiterate to herself why the work had to come first. It simply did, and tonight it felt bloody rotten.

“Peggy?”

She let out a sigh, deep enough to empty her lungs and make her body feel hollow. “No, Daniel. You should not.”

“Then…”

“You should ask me not to go, but we’re not those people, and we’ll never be. So absent that, you should ask me to spend the night with you.”

His eyebrows rose.

“Of course, you’re not _that_ person, either. So I don’t know, Daniel. But…” She took a breath, grateful for a moment for her exhaustion, as it pushed her to finally spit out the words. “You don’t want me to leave, and I don’t want to go. And we’re doing it anyhow.”

They stared each other down as a bell somewhere counted out the hour. Then Daniel leaned past her and opened the passenger door.

“You said I’m not that person.” He stepped back. “So I won’t ask.”

\---

She had only seen Daniel’s house once, a few days before, when he had forgotten something at home and she had been so intent on finishing their conversation that she’d followed him right into the car.

The furnishings were practical, the decorating minimal, but nonetheless she had found her eyes drawn to the hand knit blanket on the couch and the framed photographs on the mantel. This time, again, matters more pressing kept her from asking about the faces in them, namely the magnet pull of the kitchen. But even there, from her perch on a stool in the corner she spotted a few hand-labeled spice jars that weren’t in his writing. Pieces of a different kind of history.

“I get nervous when you’re this quiet.”

Peggy’s attention returned to Daniel, where he stood carefully balanced in front of the counter, dicing an onion. “Simply taking it all in.”

He caught her eyeing him up and down and snorted softly. “I know it’s impressive.”

She watched the onion spill into even pieces. “You’re better at this than you let on.”

“I said I do okay.”

There was a feeling in a kitchen, though, when it was habitually used. Peggy knew by the lack of it in any of her own. It was a warm feeling, and it wasn’t the whiskey. She took another sip, hooking her ankle around the leg of the stool. She was fairly certain it wasn’t the whiskey.

“But for the last time,” she insisted, “there has to be something I can do besides put a pot on to boil.”

“Nope.”

“You’re impossible.”

Daniel’s knife slid smoothly against the cutting board. “Someone has to keep up with you.”

“Oh, is that it.” When had that smirk started prompting the urge to kiss him senseless?

He was too far to reach from the stool. She stretched out her foot, barely managing to brush his knee.

Daniel squinted at her stockings. “What happened to your shoes?”

“I’m afraid I’ve lost them.”

He laughed, but Peggy caught something else in his expression.

She crossed her legs pensively. “What’s that look?”

Daniel shook his head without looking up. “Just haven’t seen you like this.”

“And how would that be?” She sat straighter.

He gave a half-shrug.

“That is not an answer, Chief Sousa.”

But she knew what he wasn’t saying. As they had settled in with the radio playing low, she felt her shoulders relax and her smile loosen. In the warmth of the kitchen, it was easier to remember that Jack was in recovery, that New York also meant Angie, that three hours was only a lifetime when one of them was running away. And all of those things could wait for one night with Daniel.

“I don’t suppose this counts,” she said.

He cocked his head. “Counts for what?”

“As going for that drink.”

Daniel’s breath puffed out in a laugh as he corralled the onions into a pan. “Wow. That was a long time ago.”

_I asked you here as well_ , she almost said, but that night still stung when she poked at it. She wondered if that morning last year felt the same to him.

“I was unprepared, I admit,” she said, watching his profile. “But I was interested, Daniel. I never meant to give you the impression that I wasn’t.”

He shot her a glance. “Thought you were letting me down easy. You ‘had to meet a friend.’ That seemed pretty—”

“No, no, no.” Peggy sighed, feeling an infuriating twinge of helplessness. How much simpler things could have been. “I said ‘another time’ and I meant it, Daniel!” She kicked out at him again. “Don’t I say what I mean?”

“Sometimes.” He caught her ankle. “Sometimes you lie.”

She scoffed, but Daniel tugged on her leg hard enough to tip the stool, making her grab for the counter. She caught his smirk as he sidled closer to set the pan on the stove.

“Oh, is _that_ how you want to play?” She hopped off the stool, but Daniel pulled her into a kiss.

That was cheating. The past week hadn’t included nearly enough of this. In fact, hardly any of this, because they needed to push through the files, and the brief kisses when Daniel dropped her off at Howard’s—half of them in the car, because she insisted he not bother with getting out—were so far from enough.

This one was something better. Daniel’s hands were warm through her blouse, and whether or not it was partly for balance, she preferred his firm grip. He was taller now, with her feet bare. Peggy hummed her approval as she reached for the buttons of his shirt.

Daniel broke away, chuckling. “Dinner, Peg.”

“Dinner. Yes.” She cleared her throat, ordering herself not to blush. She hadn’t _truly_ started undressing him in the kitchen. And he hadn’t truly objected.

In the midst of those thoughts, she nearly missed the slight wince as he turned back to the counter, leaning harder on his left hand.

“Daniel?” She saw him hesitate. “ _Daniel_.”

He glanced at her and then nodded at the stool with a grimace. “That.”

She brought it up to the stove. Just the right height to keep his left foot standing. It was a small thing, hardly a concession. After this long, did it still bother him to use it, or simply for her to see it?

Peggy paused. Would it bother him for her to see it?

“That’s handy,” she said lightly, moving to refill their glasses.

But the question lingered in the back of her mind through dinner. As expected, Daniel declined her offer to take care of the dishes, though he did drag the stool in front of the sink before they started, which felt like a good omen.

Because dear God, if he was going to let his pride dictate things between them… He was so wonderfully practical in every other aspect. And Peggy didn’t have Violet’s familiarity with the subject, but surely Daniel knew better than to think she would be put off by the reality of the situation. If she required a man with two full legs, she would have chosen one.

None of these were things she could say to him.

“It’s just been a long day,” he said abruptly.

For one horrifying instant Peggy thought he was asking her to leave.

He tapped the stool with the dishrag in his hand. “Some days… You remember what I said about your body quitting on you.”

Good that he was gazing intently into the sink, because she couldn’t have masked the flash of sheer relief. “I do.”

She may have imagined the bit of tension leaving his shoulders, but she caught the look he snuck in her direction—a tentative, hopeful look that she wasn’t supposed to see. It was that look that led them to his couch, under the pretext of whiskey glasses that sat untouched on the coffee table.

It was that look that made her pause from their slow burning kisses and let her fingertips graze his right thigh. “Where?” she whispered.

Daniel covered her hand with his, and she felt her palm slide over a seam.

_Can’t find my leg anywhere_.

He was so strong, painfully strong in what he had lost. So strong to let her this close.

Looking down, Peggy realized they had been here before. Somehow she hadn’t noticed then. She hadn’t recognized just how intimate that moment had been. Slowly she turned her hand over to grasp his.

This time their lips met. This time there were no ripped stitches, no crash overhead, no radio but the soft music in the background. Her fingers found his buttons again, and now he didn’t pull away.

Peggy drew back to remove his shirt and couldn’t help a smile, her gaze skimming his undershirt. “Midnight Oil.”

Daniel blinked. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

“I saw you in the hospital, like this.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You were looking?”

“Not quite. But I wasn’t blind.” She slipped his shirt off his shoulders—strong shoulders, more tanned than in her memory—and started on the buttons of her blouse.

“Russia,” he admitted. His eyes followed her fingers. “The locker room. But, uh…” His face scrunched. “I was looking.”

“Daniel Sousa, I am shocked.”

“Hey—I was a respectable guy before you. And then there you were, just so…” He trailed off as she stripped off her blouse.

Peggy tried to ignore her heart jittering. What a far cry from that day in the locker room. “There I was what?”

Daniel pulled her toward him, their noses brushing. “There you were.”

He was so tender with her, more than anyone had a right to be. Which was a strange thought, Peggy realized. But there was some measure of surrender in this, a feeling of opening as he traced her collarbone, down to the top of her breast, soft but sure. She hadn’t let anyone this near to her in a long time.

And he was gentle, yes, but he was fervent, a balance that only Daniel could strike so well. It struck something in Peggy, like flint on steel, sharper with each touch. She gasped when his teeth grazed her neck.

“Okay?” he murmured against her skin.

“Mmm.” She grabbed his hand on her hip, directing him to the clasp of her bra.

“Peggy.” His voice was rough. “We should probably—”

“Don’t say ‘stop.’”

He chuckled. “I wasn’t going to.”

She felt her cheeks warm. “Good, then. What…were you saying?”

“Should we…?” He gestured to the hall.

To his bedroom. “Right. Yes.”

Anticipation coiled in her stomach. Even tangled on his couch, she hadn’t been entirely sure that they intended the same thing.

But now she stood in Daniel’s bedroom, wholly unable to notice even the paint color while he sat on the bed in front of her, laying kisses along the edge of her bra as he unbuttoned her slacks.

“Daniel,” she whispered, her eyes falling closed. It was a bit early to be losing her head quite this much. She rested her hands on his shoulders, breathing deeply, though doubtless he could still feel her pounding heart. The last of her firsts was long gone with Fred, but this felt like the first of something very different.

Her slacks pooled at her feet, and Daniel’s fingertips found her bare thighs, trailing up and down like he couldn’t keep his hands away. His touch sent up goose bumps.

“Yours?” she asked, only slightly breathless. He was still fully clothed from the waist down.

Daniel’s gaze flicked to his knees and back up. “If you want to see it.”

Peggy wondered for a moment who had. After the doctors and nurses and therapists, who did he trust? She slid her hands up to the nape of his neck, curling her fingers in his hair. Her—he trusted her.

Whatever he read in her expression was enough of an answer. Quietly he undressed, careful but unhesitating, until he sat in his boxer shorts. He leaned his prosthetic against the nightstand and looked up at her.

The first thought that struck her, with a fierceness that made her heart stutter, was that she loved him.

That was a thought to tuck away, to peek at later, shyly. Her second thought was the need to be bare, to be as naked as he must have felt with her right now. He looked a little confused when she undid her bra, but he would trust her. And perhaps he even understood her intention, because he let his eyes travel unabashedly over her body as she laid down her cloth defenses.

When her last garment hit the floor, he let out a deep breath. “Jesus, Peggy.”

She knelt on the bed, straddling his lap, and he squeezed her hips as if he couldn’t believe she was here. She would make him believe it, pulling off his undershirt to press her breasts against his chest, sucking on the skin at his pulse point until he groaned deep in his throat.

“Peggy—” He pulled her down with him and then flipped them over quick enough to make her breath catch.

She stared up at him, her nerves firing off like rockets. He was hard against her, just there, just in the right spot. He ground his hips in a slow circle, and she sucked in a breath.

“Yeah?” he whispered.

Peggy didn’t trust her voice. Even through his shorts, he must have felt how wet she was. She had struggled, the last few times that she’d indulged the urge to slip her hand down—struggled to finish until finally, desperate and ashamed, she had imagined Daniel. And she had imagined him like this.

Kissing down her neck like he wanted to eat her alive. Suckling at her breasts, nipping at the flesh at her hip, burying his face between her legs. He wanted her, God, he wanted her, and she banished every memory of the fear that it had no longer been true. With his lips and his tongue and those fingers steady enough to defuse bombs, he drew out shaky moans until her climax rippled over with a gasp.

“Daniel—” She stretched out her hand, and there he was, pressing soft kisses below her ear. This man was more than she ever deserved, but she still needed more of him.

She nudged him onto his back. “Turn.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Peggy narrowed her eyes at his smirk, but it melted away as he lifted his hips for her to slide his boxers down.

Again, she felt that sense of something different. Something new. There was nothing left between them now but space to cross. She laid her hand on his left knee and glanced up at his face. He didn’t meet her eyes, watching the path of her fingers as she traced up his leg. He must have known where she would go next, and she waited for him to stop her, but he didn’t move.

On the other side she began at his hip. His muscles tensed, but he was silent as she trailed her fingers lightly down. When she came to the end of his thigh, he exhaled in a rush.

Peggy realized she had been holding her breath. “All right?” she asked.

“Peggy…” His brow furrowed deeper, and he shook his head slightly, but he wasn’t telling her no. “Peggy.”

She laid her body flush to his, and Daniel tangled his hands in her hair, chanting her name in her ear almost reverently until her lips found his again.

He inhaled sharply when she wrapped her hand around him. She drew back to stroke him for a moment, reveling in the way he felt in her hand. Daniel’s cock. Unable to help herself, she ducked down for just one taste.

“ _Fuck_.”

Peggy lifted her head in surprise.

His ears were bright red. “Sorry.”

She smirked. “By all means, Daniel, feel free to express yourself.” She bent to repeat it, but his hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“You probably…shouldn’t do that again.”

Dripping wet, she wasn’t about to complain. She gestured to the nightstand drawer with a question, and he nodded.

The box was unopened, prompting another question.

Daniel shook his head. “Not since before…” His gaze darted down.

“The war?” she finished gently.

His nod was grateful.

“Well.” She tore open the packet, not quite able to look at him. “Neither have I.”

She could read everything in his stunned face. That she had never been with Steve. That she, enduring all of the barbs about sleeping her way into the job, never had been with Steve. And there, painfully, the smallest hint of relief.

_Oh, Daniel._ She crawled back up and kissed him soundly. _Stop this bloody stupid notion of measuring up._

Surely he knew that she wanted _him_. Surely he could see it as she lowered herself onto him, a soft moan slipping from her lips. The sensation she remembered couldn’t possibly have been this exquisite. This was Daniel.

He had already brought her to orgasm, a rare enough feat. Now, as she began to move, he grabbed her hips and thrust up to meet her.

“Oh, _God_.” Her eyes flew open in shock.

He did it again, and she had to bury her face in his neck to keep quiet. His laugh rumbled in his chest, only a little strained. “By all means, Peg—express yourself.”

“Daniel Sous- _Ah_.” She dug her fingers into his shoulders.

“Yes, Agent Carter?”

He wouldn’t stop until he brought her to her knees.

“Damn you.”

“That’s not very nice.” He thrust harder, and a moan broke from her.

“Oh, you’re _enjoying_ this, aren’t you?”

His hips stilled, and she felt his head turn. “I sincerely hope you understand the point here.”

Peggy growled. “You know what I mean.”

“I do. And yeah.” He punctuated the word, making her gasp. “I’m enjoying it.”

She fisted her hand in his hair in response, tugging hard enough to make him groan and fuck her roughly. Which should surprise her not at all, given the way they operated together, but it had her panting at how _good_ it was. She pressed her lips to his neck, muffling the sounds coming out of her mouth because they sounded alarmingly like whimpers. Their pace quickened, and she slid her hand down between them.

“Peggy—” His breath was ragged.

“Yes. Nearly.”

He grunted as her muscles clenched, and then his hips stuttered, and he stifled a moan that would linger in her dreams in New York.

Daniel. Finally, Daniel.

When they settled back in bed, Peggy curled herself against his left side, draping her arm across his chest, her leg over his. Everything was peaceful. The lamp dim, the pillow soft. Daniel’s fingers stroked idly up and down her arm.

She hadn’t allowed herself to imagine this part.

“I would take you with me,” she murmured. “In my suitcase.”

“I don’t think my crutch would fit.”

Peggy smiled into his shoulder. “I suppose not.” She could feel his heartbeat under her palm, steady. It had taken them so long to find their way here. “Daniel…”

“Stay.”

She lifted her head.

“Just tonight.” He squeezed her shoulder gently. “Stay.”

They both knew he meant more than that, and they knew he couldn’t mean more than that. Because he would let her go when he had to. He would trust her to come back. And when she could, to stay.

Peggy tucked her head into his neck. “Oh, you would have to drag me out.”

Whoever had ordered the hit on Jack, she hoped for the opportunity to land a solid punch.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Daniel is sad and endearing and learns a few things.

 

Daniel’s gaze fell on the battered note still sitting on the corner of his desk. _Peggy – vacation days? + + +_

They’d had nine days. And not one was vacation.

“Damn it.” He pushed aside the report in front of him. It was a minor case, and the main point had lost him a page and a half ago.

He rested his forehead in his hands, digging his thumbs into his temples. It had been optimistic to think he could get any work done today. But he wasn’t about to spend the afternoon moping around the house, where the memories of this morning would only play back more vividly.

Peggy asleep in his bed. Peggy at his kitchen table, licking syrup off her fingers. Peggy wearing his dress shirt.

Peggy kissing him hard before she got on the plane.

“Chief?” Rose stood in the doorway. “I knocked.”

Daniel rubbed his face. “Sorry, Rose. What do you need?”

“Just your signature.”

He should assume that as the default answer. He flipped through the papers she set down, mainly checking that none of them mentioned Vernon Masters. Neither the man nor a body had been found. Daniel had a feeling that neither ever would be. But that wouldn’t be anyone’s first guess, and they didn’t know how many people were looking.

“And a call came from the hospital. Chief Thompson will be discharged tomorrow.”

“Great,” Daniel muttered. Swell replacement for Peggy at breakfast.

Rose’s expression softened. “Is there anything else I can do?”

Daniel shook himself. If he didn’t get a handle on his attitude, the remaining agents under his employ would have even less trouble connecting the dots between Agent Carter’s departure and the hickey fading on his neck. Rose’s sympathy kept her from commenting, but he had noticed her eyeing it a little too gleefully.

“No.” He cleared his throat. “Just fine. Thanks.” Peggy could have just worn a damn scarf and been done with it.

Rose lingered in front of his desk, fussing with the papers. Her voice dropped to a hopeful whisper. “She’ll be back soon, won’t she?”

Daniel managed a tight smile. “Yeah.”

_Soon_ had a liberal definition.

The door shut, and Daniel leaned back in his chair. Maybe she shouldn’t have spent the night with him. It had to make this harder, knowing now in excruciating detail exactly what they could have together. Maybe they should have waited until—

He snorted. Now there was a remnant of his brain before the war. They should have waited until what, she got impaled again? He could still feel her scars under his fingers.

It was better to share that, better to have that memory, even if it meant aching even worse for her. Nowhere he hadn’t been before. And at least this time he knew he wasn’t alone in it. That kiss she had given him at the airport.

The phone rang, and he scowled at the jolt in his stomach. _Not Peggy,_ he told himself. _You idiot_. She could only be halfway to New York.

“Chief? You’ve got a pair of visitors.”

“Thanks, Rose.” He heard the click as she hung up before he could ask who was waiting. She hadn’t used his cover, but then who couldn’t be sent upstairs?

He recognized their voices before he rounded the filing cabinets. “Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis.”

“Chief Sousa.” Jarvis stood up from the bench. “We were just in the neighborhood.”

Daniel had already seen them that morning, when they offered to keep him company while Peggy changed and collected her suitcases—he hadn’t been bold enough to suggest that he might not be out of line to keep Peggy company instead.

“What…can I do for you?” His confusion must have been plain.

“We’re aware that Chief Thompson will be convalescing at your home, and Ana wondered if we might lend assistance with preparations.”

“Oh.” With what, scrubbing his shower? Or the rest of the chore list Daniel had to look forward to tonight. He shook his head. “Mrs. Jarvis, you’re still recover—”

“‘Ana,’ please.” She flashed that no-nonsense smile. “And Edwin and I are both happy to help. I’m sure there is a task or two that even Mr. Jarvis cannot object to my doing.”

Daniel looked at Rose, but it was clear whose camp she was in.

Jarvis clapped his hands. “Splendid. All settled.”

Once Daniel got past the exercise in humility, he had to admit their contribution was a relief. Anything that spared him from kneeling on the bathroom floor was a relief, and after Jarvis went out to “fetch provisions” for dinner, Daniel realized they had kept his mind occupied well into the evening. And checked off every task on the list.

He emptied the dustpan in the kitchen and scanned through the house one more time. Thompson would always find something to make a crack at, but at least Daniel could make him work at it.

“I believe it looks quite good,” Ana said from the living room.

He found her stationed on the couch, still working. “You really don’t need to do that.”

She smiled at the throw pillow in her lap. “I like to keep my hands busy.” She adjusted her grip on her needle. “They grow sad when they are not useful.”

Daniel took a seat beside her. Ana’s manner was nothing like either of his sisters, but for an instant he missed them both acutely. When had they last spoken? Not since the Isodyne case had run out of control. Not since he had proposed to Violet. He had been waiting for a good time to call with the news. Lucky he hadn’t found one, in the end. But there would be another conversation now, and he would have to do it without mentioning Peggy.

And then somewhere down the road, he hoped—boy, did he hope—a conversation where he mentioned Peggy.

His mental distractions were flagging. Daniel rubbed his leg restlessly. He had plenty of practice with this routine, and whether he was the one leaving or the one staying behind, distraction was the only way through the first few days. Then he would begin to adjust. His sense of normal would adjust. It just surprised him that normal had shifted in nine days.

It shouldn’t surprise him. Any time Peggy walked away, she left a hole.

“If there is something you would like to relieve from your mind, my lips do not spill secrets.”

Daniel glanced at Ana, but she didn’t look up from her work. “Just a lot changing.”

“Mm.” She tugged on the thread. “The two whiskey glasses instead of one?”

He had forgotten the abandoned glasses on the coffee table until he saw Ana carrying them into the kitchen. All pretense that Peggy’s night away was spent working had probably washed down the drain with the rest of the whiskey.

But better Ana and Jarvis than anyone at the office. “Something like that.”

Ana hummed. “It is hard to part from someone, for any length of time. But I suspect it is harder with Miss Carter than with most.”

Daniel watched her tie off the thread. “I’m starting to think you didn’t show up to help with the house.”

She gave a shrug. “Help with the house, perhaps with something else.” She smoothed the new seam along the tear and looked up at him. “We all need reinforcements, Daniel.”

The front door opened and Jarvis appeared, heavily laden with grocery bags. “I found the most excellent selection of melons!”

Daniel stood to help, gesturing to Ana not to get up.

Reinforcements. He had already learned that lesson, more harshly than many people ever did. Until now he had just thought these were Peggy’s.

\---

“Honey, you’re home early.” Jack’s head lolled back to look over the arm of the couch.

“I said dinner, didn’t I?” Daniel held up the bag.

“You’re not gonna cook for me?”

Daniel took out his own sandwich and dropped the bag on top of the magazine in Jack’s lap. “I only cook for hot dates.”

With a grunt of effort, Jack hauled himself upright. He checked under his top slice of bread with an appraising look. “And how is Carter?”

Daniel shrugged, aiming for casual. “Haven’t heard from her yet.”

This would have been her first day back at the office. He had hoped through the afternoon to hear Rose announce her call, but Peggy must have been busy. Busy was good. She would be busy if things were running normally—meaning a disaster without Jack. Peggy would step in and sort out the mess. From what he had heard of the tail end of the search for Underwood, the other agents would follow her lead.

“Wait.” Jack stopped him on his path to the kitchen and gestured to the living room chair. “Family dinner.”

Day one and he was already pushing it. But it was only day one, and Daniel needed to keep his sense of humor for as many of these days as he could. He sat warily, leaning his crutch against the arm of the chair. Everyone dealt with injury differently. No surprise Jack coped by being more of an ass.

“Hey—” Jack’s tone was gentler, making Daniel glance up from his sandwich. “After I get the okay to fly, I’ll send her back.”

Daniel was too caught off guard to respond.

“This wasn’t any vacation.”

Daniel scoffed lightly. “As if she’d take a real vacation.”

“For you, she would.” Jack cracked a grin. “Man, you should’ve seen her face when I said you asked for her.”

“Yeah, thanks for that,” Daniel muttered. “Real funny.”

“Danny boy. Come on—at least some of that thanks has gotta be genuine. I mean…” Jack waggled his finger at his throat.

Daniel’s ears went warm. One more damn day and that mark would have been gone. “Not gonna talk about it, Jack.”

Jack held up a hand in concession, and they fell into silence. Daniel was fine with silence. It wasn’t comfortable, but Daniel would worry if he ever started to feel comfortable around Thompson.

“So you, uh…” Jack glanced at the clock and opened one of the pill bottles from the array on the coffee table. “You figure out who wanted me to bite it?”

Daniel kept a neutral expression. “Not yet.”

They had known Jack would eventually start asking questions. But neither the official nor the unofficial investigation had turned up anything to go on. Hotel security didn’t have a description of the shooter. No fingerprints on Jack’s suitcase. Jack had identified the forged file as the only thing missing, but they already had an idea of who would take interest in that folder, and its loss didn’t give them anything more specific.

“Bet it was Vernon’s guy.”

Daniel raised his eyebrows. “You think Masters made it out?”

“Nah, I think he’s mush. But he had his eye on me. Means he wasn’t the only one.” Jack reached back to adjust the pillow behind him but seemed to think better of it when his shoulder twisted. “And favorable eye or not, it’s the same in the end. Somebody’s watching.”

Daniel hadn’t heard that tone in Jack’s voice before. It was hollow.

He needed to talk to Peggy. “Do you know who Masters reported to?”

Jack shook his head. “But I know who he has cigars with. I can make you a list.”

This would be a narrow line to tread. But even if Jack was the one who had discovered the Arena Club key, for him this was a reaction to a bullet. They would give him every reason to believe the investigation stopped there.

“Do that for us and we’ll take a look.” Daniel crumpled his sandwich wrapper. “I’m going to take a shower. You need anything first?”

“Nah…” Jack eyed the pills in front of him. “I think I got it all right here.”

Daniel wouldn’t deny it—it was disconcerting to see Jack sitting there. Jack moving around with a cane. Jack turning down an offer of help without a smart reply. It was the sort of role reversal that could have knocked down a couple of walls, if Jack were anyone but Jack.

Daniel sat for longer than necessary under the hot water, massaging his leg. Normally if he had a shower at the end of the day, he took pleasure in not putting the prosthesis back on. Even if he hobbled more without it, there was relief in letting his body just be his body—which was progress in itself, considering how long it hadn’t even felt like his body anymore. But tonight…

He sighed as he adjusted the socket again. Laid up or not, the last person who would ever see his pinned-up pant leg was Jack Thompson.

Daniel could hear him talking in the living room when he opened the bathroom door. “Sure, Jack,” he said under his breath, “help yourself to the telephone.” Knowing Jack, he was probably calling long-distance.

Wait.

Daniel sidled into the hall, listening.

“Can’t say I miss that weather. The one decent thing about this time zone. Not that I’ve seen the sun. Your boyfriend dropped me on the couch and just up and left again.”

“Jack.”

Jack wheeled around, leaning on his cane. “Whoops. I’m ‘bout to get a crutch to the face.” He held the phone out to Daniel. “Bye Marge—” he called loudly, the end choked off by a wincing coughing fit that Daniel couldn’t feel much sympathy for.

He grabbed the receiver. “Go lay down.”

Of course Jack went for the couch, positioning himself within perfect earshot.

Daniel faced the wall. “Peg.”

“Daniel.” He could hear her smile. “Rose said you’d already gone home.”

“Well, I’ve got a dog that isn’t housebroken.”

Jack gave a hoarse laugh behind him.

Daniel ignored it. “How are you? How’s Angie?”

“No problems whatsoever with the flight. Angie is doing spectacularly—she has an audition for a film, of all things.”

“Huh. Might have to get her out here.”

“I know, can you imagine?” Peggy’s brightness rang a little false, and he tried to read what lay beneath it.

“You’ve been to the office?” he asked.

“Yes, they’re carrying on as best they can.”

There was definitely something wrong with her tone. His brow furrowing, Daniel waited for her to give him a clue.

“Everyone wishes Jack well, and—” She scoffed. “I must say, this connection has a terrible buzz on my end. I expected more from a Stark telephone.”

Daniel’s stomach dropped. Her line may not be secure.

Her line may not be secure at _Stark’s_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for continuing with me! I'll have done my job if you enjoy reading even half as much as I enjoy the writing. And thank you so much for your kind comments. They are little treasure boxes.


	4. Chapter 4

It was definitely the same car. Still parked half a block down the street. Peggy adjusted the opera glasses, wishing Howard kept something more tactical in the penthouse.

“Blast,” she whispered. No chance to stop at a public phone this morning.

 _Call whenever you’ve got time_ , Daniel had said last night, and she could hear the alarm he tried to tamp down. _Whenever you’ve got time._ Whenever it was safe—as soon as it was safe. He wouldn’t have minded her waking him, even at five in the morning on the West Coast, if she could have explained what the blazes was going on.

Peggy could use an explanation as well.

She checked that the transmitter was fully hidden behind the radio and tucked Howard’s bug into her handbag. She was thankful that he had fashioned the transmitter without a single question. Though when she stopped to consider, it was hardly newsworthy among the devices she had historically requested—or, yes, _borrowed_.

Angie was already gone, balancing work shifts with rehearsals and preparing for that movie audition. In some ways her hours had been fortunate so far, as she’d missed Peggy combing through the apartment on her hands and knees last night with a signal detector. Finding nothing had brought as much frustration as relief. A simple bug in the penthouse, she could have smashed under her heel.

As she passed the surveillance car, she took a moment to appreciate the irony of her own intentions for the New York office. All of these people eavesdropping on one another.

Walking past the Bell Company switchboards, she briefly imagined smashing them under her heel. It wouldn’t help her make a call, but it would feel satisfying.

The sight of the girls there brought another strange feeling, one that didn’t make sense. It had been months since Rose had greeted her in the lobby—months since Daniel had sat at the desk upstairs, months since Mr. Jarvis had answered the door in New York. In fact the only person missing from the last time she was here was Jack Bloody Thompson. But when the elevator doors opened, Peggy felt a flash of the first day she had walked into this building, when she had known no one.

“Carter—” Agent Ramirez flagged her down. “The Director wants to see you.”

Peggy’s eyes flew to Jack’s office. The door was open.

From nine o’clock in the morning yesterday until six o’clock in the evening, the office had sat empty, the blinds drawn. _Sometimes he gets called away_ , Agent Henry had said. But still there was a sense of presence. The Director— _of what?_ Peggy wanted to ask flippantly and knew better than to ask in any tone. Not “Acting Chief.” There was significance behind that. And it felt a lot like calling Daniel’s office and hearing Vernon Masters answer.

It was Daniel’s voice she heard in her head as she approached the doorway. _Don’t give him a reason, Peg._ _He’ll already be looking for one._

She drew in a slow breath. This was a reconnaissance mission. And easier than expected—first thing in the morning, she could walk straight in with the bug in her handbag.

She tapped on the open door. “Director?”

Tall, even when seated. Mid to late sixties, like the members of the Council. Crisp suit. He set down his pen. Left handed.

“Agent Carter.”

His voice was softer than she expected. Gentle, almost. A slow smile creased his face, narrow but not forced.

“Please.” He gestured to the chair in front of the desk.

He let a few more seconds pass than was comfortable, but Peggy squashed the impulse to speak first.

“I want to apologize for not being present to meet with you yesterday.” His smile widened marginally. “I’m Matthias Corse. Director of Internal Strategic Operations.”

Peggy put on a smile to mirror his. “A pleasure, sir.”

Internal Strategic Operations. War Department.

“I appreciated your report on events in Los Angeles.”

“Agent Ramirez indicated that you requested a personal account.” That was the part of yesterday that grated. She and Daniel had completed everything. A separate report equated to busywork.

“Yes, I’m of the mind that each office should have a full record of its agents’ activity.”

Peggy felt a warning twinge. Not from a threat in Corse’s tone—from the absence of one. His expression didn’t change, that soft smile that looked unnervingly genuine.

“Absolutely, sir,” she said carefully.

“And how is Chief Thompson faring? I’ve been informed I missed a few calls from L.A.”

Peggy studied the concern in the lines of his forehead. “I spoke with him just last night, in fact.” Which Corse would know. “He’s been released from the hospital.”

“Good, good. Now to regain his strength.” Corse shook his head like a chiding father. “Someone chose the wrong trigger to pull. I’ve had Agents Ramirez and Henry combing for leads. I’m sure they will welcome your assistance.”

Peggy hesitated. “Yes, sir.”

Not relegating her to coffee and filing. He was letting her operate—on the case for the Council’s hit man, no less.

Was he so certain that they would find nothing? Or was he certain of a trap laid for them?

She needed to talk to Daniel.

Corse rose, and she followed suit, reaching down for her handbag and slipping the bug under the seat of her chair as she stood. They needed that to fill in the blanks, the hairline spaces between those perfect teeth. Because this arm of the Council was something unfamiliar. It was quiet, and patient, and it watched them carry out its plans with the ease of someone with every thread accounted for.

If Vernon Masters was a snake, Matthias Corse was a spider.

\---

The morning passed without another word from the corner office. Peggy flipped through files from a case she had closed with Jack before Christmas, wishing she could verify that Howard’s bug was working. She would have noticed the effects of the sort of countermeasures she had encountered in the Arena Club, but nothing could be certain until she picked up a proper signal. But the transmitter was in her room in the penthouse, and she didn’t need her observers wondering why she might be dropping in at lunch.

A diner, she could get away with. She needed an untapped phone line.

There was precious little to note about the man who tailed her there. Brown hair, gray suit, hat. Pulled low, of course—shame they couldn’t assign proper agents to her; freelancers never blended in as well as they thought they did.

He sat across the street with a newspaper while she ate. That was interesting. They were watching, but not closely. Well, she hoped at this point her file gave at least some indication that she would recognize surveillance.

The test came when the waitress closed the blinds against the sun, blocking the man’s view. Peggy waited for him to enter, but a glance through the glass doors showed him still parked on the bench. Perhaps he didn’t realize there was a telephone inside. Perhaps the Council believed she would be working alone, and tracking her movements would cover all the bases.

There was a time when that was true.

No one else in the diner roused her suspicions, and the seats within earshot of the telephone were currently vacant. Peggy needed to move quickly.

Of course the first thing that came to mind at the word “quick” was long-distance calling. She watched the doors as she waited for the operators to connect. “Pick up, pick up, pick—”

“Stark residence, Edwin Jarvis speaking.”

Peggy breathed a sigh. “Mr. Jarvis—”

“Miss Carter! How are things in New—”

“Mr. Jarvis, I need to reach Howard.”

He had heard her hushed, urgent tone before, and he caught it now. “I’m afraid Mr. Stark is meeting with a contractor for the new facility, on site. I can deliver the message personally for him to call—”

“The phones in the penthouse are not secure. I believe their connections may be monitored. Tell him to send a telegram with a time that he’ll answer. Tell him…” Peggy rubbed at the ache above her left eyebrow. “Tell him I don’t know what to do.”

“Understood, Miss Carter.” All the levity had left his voice.

“I’ve got to go.”

“Do be careful. And does Chief Sousa—?”

“I’m informing him. Thank you, Mr. Jarvis.”

Peggy didn’t pause for breath, still watching the doors as she counted out her remaining coins and composed herself. Mr. Jarvis needed to hear the urgency, but Daniel did not.

Rose put her through immediately.

“Peggy?” he said.

“I’m on a public phone. This is the situation—”

“Wait a minute. First—you’re okay.”

 _Daniel._ Peggy felt a flicker of a smile. “Yes. I’m all right. The New York office is not.”

“Corse,” Daniel said at the name. “I haven’t heard of him.”

“Neither have I. But nor had I heard of Vernon Masters. The War Department is a tight-lipped beast.” Peggy leaned closer to the door. Still no sign of her babysitter. “We’ll talk about it when I have a private line. See what you can find on him before then.”

“Stark will be able to fix the phone?”

“I don’t know, but it’s Howard. If he can’t fix it, he’ll weasel his way around.”

\---

The telegram arrived that evening, brief and in code. _Tomorrow ten AM or anytime tonight._

Bless Howard for knowing when something was important. Peggy gathered a small fortune in pocket change from the various corners of the apartment and waited for the cover of dark, squinting irritably at the car parked down the block. It had been a long time since she’d had to make use of a coal chute, but she suspected these goons were just good enough to catch her if she went out the front door, even in a wig from Howard’s “theatrical” wardrobe.

The coal chute seemed to remember their history at the Griffith and didn’t give her trouble. The back alley ran out of sight of the surveillance car. She found a phone booth two streets over.

Howard still sounded overly cheery, given the situation. “You got yourself in a fix, Peg.”

“I don’t think I had much to do with it, but yes.” This was not the time for chatter. “Any ideas?”

“One. But you’re not gonna like it.”

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Howard, I’m still waiting to hear a plan of yours that I _do_ like. What’s this one?”

“Peg…you’re going to have to break into my house.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all know Howard needs a dramatic pause for effect.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Peggy breaks into Howard Stark's mansion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretend this is chapter 4-B. Picking up with Daniel next time.

“‘Vacation mode,’” Peggy muttered, blinking the rain out of her eyes as she twisted the lock picks in the gate. Whose house had a bloody “vacation mode”?

Howard.

Helpful, headstrong, hellish Howard.

The lock clicked open, and Peggy cursed at the blinding light that flooded the courtyard as she made for the front door. She paused under the overhang to sort out her lock picking kit. Really, she should conserve some of her irritation for the inside of the house, but it was already growing late. After climbing back up the coal chute for the lock picks, back down the coal chute in better tactical wear, and finally making it to the mansion, she didn’t want to check her watch. If it was still working after that convenient downpour.

The front door put up considerably more of a fight than the outer gate, but finally ceded. Peggy flicked on her torch, taking in the dark foyer. All the interior doors she could see had closed, as Howard had warned. She let the beam pan slowly from left to right. The motion detector would run through there, straight across the center of the room. Fortunately she did not have to attempt to breach that, because even Howard had no suggestions for avoiding the “lockdown setting” that would follow.

Because the current situation wasn’t considered a lockdown.

“Vacation mode,” she repeated under her breath, brushing back the wet strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail.

She directed the light toward the stairs to her right. First step, second step. She held the railing to reach to the fifth, dripping rainwater elegantly on the wood floor. The landing was clear. Seventh, tenth, eleventh, thirteenth, fourteenth, seventeenth. At the top of the stairs, she turned left.

Interior doors. One in the hallway, one to the lounge, one more to the system control in the master bedroom. If he could just stash a blasted key somewhere nearer than the Jarvises’ kitchen—which was also on the other side of the motion sensor. Peggy propped up the torch in front of the first door and opened her lock pick set. Even the light switch would trigger an alarm.

As did picking the locks. Peggy gritted her teeth at the buzzer that erupted when the door opened. There was no way around that one. She turned to the numbered dial on the other side.

_34-24-35_

Howard was nothing if not consistent.

The buzzer cut off, and Peggy counted off four doors along the righthand side of the hall.

“Don’t make this the night you forget the layout of your own house, Howard.”

This door emitted a shrill tone that danced up and down the scale all too gleefully. The portrait collection wasn’t enough—he needed an alarm collection.

_38-24-36_

She huffed through the lounge. Her hair was drying plastered to her head, and her shirt was sticking to the back of her neck. One final door.

The alarm blasted, and Peggy cocked her head. Was that…?

Her nose wrinkled. No, no, _no_ , Howard. She twisted the dial through the last sequence like she was trying to snap it off and shuddered as the recording cut off mid-moan.

Peggy had hoped never in her life to set foot in this room. But desperate times called for breaking and entering. She found the master keypad on the wall and hesitated for an instant at the numbers. Howard did know when something was important.

_07-04-18_

A single clear tone signaled the system disarming.

Peggy found towels in the bathroom to blot at the wet patches on her coat and squeeze out her limp ponytail, refusing to look in the gold-framed mirror. At least “vacation mode” included a thorough cleaning of the place.

Not about to linger in the bedroom, she returned to the lounge and moved the phone close enough to pour from the liquor cabinet while she waited for the call to connect.

“Peg?” Howard answered. The clock on the wall confirmed that Mr. Jarvis was long past sherry-Benny Goodman-bed.

“I’ve made it in. Thank you, Howard.” She sipped at the whiskey. Well earned, if she did say so. “Though I have no comment on the alarm to your bedroom.”

“What, you’re not impressed?”

She snorted.

“Well, you’ll find the key in Jarvis’ kitchen. Use it as much as you need.”

“Thank you for the whiskey, also.”

Howard’s scratchy chuckle traveled over the line and brought a wave of missing him, obscene security system or no. “Take care of yourself, Peg.”

Peggy checked the clock. Eleven o’clock in Los Angeles. She picked up the receiver again.

While the line rang, she settled herself on the couch, kicking off her shoes and dangling her feet over the arm. Give him time to reach the phone. She scowled at the clammy feeling of her damp stockings.

“Hello?”

“Daniel. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, no.” He sounded sleepy, regardless. “Just about to head to bed. Are you… What’s going on?”

“I’m at Howard’s—the mansion, not the penthouse. If they’re intercepting those calls at a switchboard, I don’t think there’s much he can do. But this place is properly outfitted for security.” She adjusted the towel under her head. “A little too well.”

“Yeah, how did you get in there?”

“By memorizing an unacceptable number of women’s measurements.”

“What?”

“Pass codes. Howard is…” She rolled her eyes in the direction of the bedroom and stopped at the sight of a portrait that looked like a precursor to the collection. For God’s sake.

“Got it. But you’re safe there.”

“Yes. Did you find anything on Matthias Corse?”

“Thompson knew the name, but he doesn’t think Corse was a friend of Masters. They ran in different—” Daniel’s voice moved away from the phone. “No, I’m not talking about you. Quit eavesdropping and go to sleep.”

“Things sound warm and friendly over there.”

Daniel grumbled wordlessly.

“But speaking of eavesdropping,” she said, “I planted the bug under a chair in Jack’s office. Corse wasn’t there when I tested the transmitter in the penthouse, but you should try your receiver tomorrow.”

“You said you met him today. What did you think?”

Peggy frowned, rolling her foot at the ankle. “I’m not sure. He was…perplexing. Unsettling. Dangerous, but somehow…” She let out a sigh. “Somehow today left me feeling more uncertain than before.”

“Uncertain how?”

“Well, to be perfectly honest, I expected to be chastised. At the least.”

“And you weren’t.”

“He has me looking into suspects from Jack’s old cases. If the Council believes I’m looking at _them_ , they shouldn’t let me anywhere near that investigation. Not even to watch me. Which is what I believe he’s doing,” she added. “It’s just…I think I was prepared for another Vernon Masters. And whatever Corse is, he isn’t that.”

Daniel made a thoughtful sound. “Well, this was the first day.”

“I’ll keep you informed over the next few. And if all is working well, you’ll be listening in.” That was the end of what needed to be addressed tonight, but Peggy nestled her head deeper in the corner of the couch arm, listening to the soft hiss of the connection. Howard could afford another minute. “And how is…everyone there?”

“Good. Rose is good—well, mostly good. Samberly asked her out to dinner again.”

Peggy smiled.

“Jack is good at using all the hot water.”

“You had better both be in one piece when I get back.”

“Hey, I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

The image of a different living room flashed in her mind. _No hospitals, I promise._

“No, I don’t suppose you do.” She paused. “And how are you?”

Daniel didn’t answer for a moment. “I miss you.”

Peggy curled onto her side. He had left quietly in January, on such short notice that it hadn’t fully hit her until he was gone. That diligent presence at his desk, that extra pair of eyes when she had combed through a file too many times to see straight, that smile when she surprised him with a cup of coffee. Peggy made a face. It was so obvious, in retrospect. Somewhere along the way she had started bringing him coffee in order to prompt that smile.

She cleared her throat. “If you’re saying that after two days, we’re going to be in a sad state by the end of this.”

He laughed, almost. “I didn’t know there was a minimum number of days.”

Peggy avoided familiarity with romantic novels, but with the rain pattering on the roof, this had to be a scene from one of them. “There isn’t.”

She could think of worse scenes to live out.

“It’s late there,” Daniel said. “I’m keeping you up.”

“You’re not,” she answered, though her eyes had fallen closed at some point. The plush couch cushions made a convincing argument not to move from them, at least until the rain stopped. She could sneak back to the penthouse in the morning.

Her own words to Daniel filtered into her consciousness. _When I get back_.

“Good night, Peg.”

She smiled without opening her eyes. Her mind had funny ways of telling her what she wanted.

“Good night, Daniel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to l0g0phile for collective brainstorming of absurdities for Howard's security system. He is a ridiculous specimen.
> 
> And thanks to Annie+MacDonald for the pass code dials!
> 
> Thank you all for reading! I love any comments.


	6. Chapter 6

When the rest of the office dispersed for lunch, Daniel was ready to flip on Stark’s radio receiver, but he decided he should be taking at least as many precautions as Peggy. The L.A. office had been swept for listening devices when it was first set up and secured, but they were the guys who went out to stand around a frozen lake—and had to call for backup for it. They were clear across the country from Washington. It was a glaring oversight, but he wasn’t sure the building had been checked since then. Meanwhile, Vernon Masters had gotten his grimy hands all over Daniel’s office.

Daniel made his way to the lab. Everyone but Grayson had cleared out of the bullpen, and Daniel could only hope the scientists had done the same. He would have them sweep the entire office in the morning, but if he could just pass the thing around his office, the sooner he could test the receiver.

Signal detectors weren’t kept under lock and key. Daniel found two in the cabinet and studied their differences.

“Something I can help you with, Chief?”

Daniel closed his eyes briefly. That voice. Did his voice always have to sound like that? “Nope, I got it, Samberly.”

“See, there’s a pencil now for the sign-out sheet.”

Daniel’s gaze landed on the clipboard hanging from the front of the cabinet.

“So you can use it this time.”

His jaw tightened. “Samberly—”

“Chief?” Rose’s voice piped in.

Daniel whipped around. “Yes.” _Yes, please, before I commit another felony._

“Someone from New York called…Scorse?” Rose’s face squinched apologetically. “I didn’t catch his first name.”

Daniel stilled. “Corse. Is he on the line?”

She shook her head. “He apologized for calling at lunch hour, said to call back.”

“Thank you, Rose.” Daniel set one of the signal detectors on the shelf and headed back to his office with the other, silently daring Samberly to say one more word about the sign-out sheet.

He didn’t.

Rose followed Daniel through the bullpen. “Would you like me to set up that call now?”

“In a minute.” He let go of his crutch to examine the device. It shouldn’t take long to scan a room the size of his office. “After lunch,” he clarified.

The apology was interesting. It fit with what Peggy had described.

“Chief?”

He glanced up.

“Is everything okay?” Rose was looking at the signal detector in his hands.

“Yeah.” Daniel smiled. “We’re just going over security. After Thompson, it seems like a good idea. Actually, if you wouldn’t mind asking Samberly to run the other one around the bullpen and the…” He trailed off as Rose’s face settled into the smile she reserved for off-key singing auditions.

“Absolutely, Chief.”

Daniel grimaced. “You know how lucky I am to have you, Rose?”

“I do, Chief.”

His office was clear. More typical of Vernon Masters, when Daniel thought about it—he wouldn’t need ears inside if he believed he had the whole puppet head. Or in Daniel’s case, tossed the wooden boy away.

Corse was not Vernon Masters. Daniel settled himself at his desk, running over the picture that Corse would have of him. He would know Daniel hadn’t taken the bait or buckled under pressure. He would know Masters had disappeared while working out of Daniel’s office, but he would have also read their case reports about Whitney Frost. He would have heard eyewitness accounts from the remaining members of the Council.

Rose rang up from downstairs. “Did you want New York now?”

While he waited for her to put the call through, Daniel watched through the office blinds as Samberly combed over the bullpen with the signal detector. His explanation to Rose hadn’t been a lie, but he wished it were the full truth. Routine security.

Their routines had been stolen out from under them.

“Chief?” Rose alerted him. “Director Corse.”

Daniel took a breath. “Director—good afternoon.”

“Chief Sousa. A long-distance line is a poor substitute for a handshake, but it’ll have to do. Matthias Corse here, holding the fort. I’m glad we finally connected.”

“So am I.” Corse’s tone was easy to match. No oil to slip on, no tripwires.

“Agent Carter tells me Chief Thompson is doing well.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Good to hear it.” His voice grew fuller there, like he might have been smiling. “It was good of her to extend her stay for him. She seems like a fine agent—I read your reports on Isodyne. Sounds like you worked well together.”

Daniel searched for a threat behind the words. “We’d been assigned as a team to a few cases when I was back in New York. When things got hairy over here, I was lucky Jack picked her to loan out.”

He tried to hit the different angles. Just a few cases—not six, because the answer was six. Assigned, not volunteered. Jack’s choice, not his. _Loan out_ , he didn’t like that one, but it put distance between them.

Corse gave a short laugh of agreement. “It seemed right to keep her in the loop about Jack Thompson, so she’s going through his old files for anyone with a grudge. She and a couple others. Henry and…something with an R.”

“Ramirez?”

“That’s it. If you’d look into the names they send your way, see if any of them were in L.A. at the time. Some joint cooperation seems wise here.”

“Agreed.”

Daniel understood now what Peggy meant. He sat in silence at his desk for a long time after he hung up, trying to picture a face to go with that voice, wondering how that was supposed to help, anyway. He should just ask Peggy. She could probably give him Corse’s approximate hat and glove size, if he asked.

God, he missed Peggy.

“Chief? Bullpen’s clear. Lab, too.”

He sent Samberly down to Rose and pulled out Stark’s receiver. This was the best plan they could come up with in the time they’d had, and the most they could ask for from Stark without giving him more information. He knew Peggy would suggest they bring him on eventually. There would be advantages to having Stark in their corner, but it wasn’t time yet.

Daniel twisted the radio dial through the static until he caught Corse’s voice.

“Good. Yes. Get that to me when it’s done.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

Daniel blinked. It was disconcerting to hear Peggy on the other end.

It was hardly different from standard communications, he told himself. She was out in the field, and he was in the van. The van was a lot better when she was stuck in it with him, but he would rather have her on the other end of the radio than have her bleeding beside him.

For the rest of the week, Daniel listened whenever he could—Corse talking to Peggy, talking to Wallace, talking to Ramirez. Talking to someone on the phone he called “Tom.” Another he called “Ralph.” Daniel took notes on a scrap of paper he kept in his pants pocket.

But nothing rang as suspicious. Even when Daniel widened his net for “suspicious.” Corse spoke to his contacts on the phone without the slightest shift in tone or syntax from the way he spoke to Peggy. And every minute he heard—and Daniel hit each part of the workday—was full of the mundane operations of keeping an office running in its leader’s absence. Corse’s favorite instruction seemed to be, “however Chief Thompson likes it done.”

Peggy called the office once, with a short list of names the New York team had taken from Jack’s cases. “Anything interesting going on over there?” she asked offhand.

“All’s quiet.”

Every morning he came in ready for Corse to show his hand. Every night he went home empty.

During one of the unsettling stretches of afternoon where Daniel and Corse were working quietly together, interrupted only by Corse’s hoarse cough, Daniel thought he had caught him.

“What does he think he’s doing?” Corse muttered.

Daniel lifted his head.

The radio crackled with the noise of papers. “Misspelling on every page.”

Daniel exhaled with a groan.

He shouldn’t be wishing to find corruption in the War Department.

But they needed a clue. They needed some kind of angle to go on. By Friday, Daniel found his focus slipping. Corse’s conversations were brief and efficient and overwhelmingly boring. Without much hope, Daniel took down a few lines verbatim in case Peggy could parse out a code.

She made it back to the phone in Stark’s mansion that night, while Thompson was out for physical therapy.

“Surely Corse has said _something_ ,” she insisted.

“Nothing. Peg, I’m telling you—”

“It’s been days now!”

“I know.” Daniel suppressed a sigh as he stretched the phone cord to reach the chair. “And I’m going to keep listening. But this isn’t Vernon Masters.”

“I told you that.”

“Yeah. You did. But I think we’re both forgetting it.”

Peggy made an affronted sound, and Daniel could picture her standing there, free hand on her hip.

“Maybe not forgetting it,” he amended, “but our tactics here are made for Masters, not Corse.”

“New tactics, then. I’ll have to—”

“Peggy, we can’t do anything until we know what we’re dealing with. Right now, we’re dealing with a blank wall. I’m not going to blow a hole in it to find out what’s on the other side.”

“I’m not proposing we blow a hole in anything.”

“Yet.”

She was silent. A bad kind of silent.

Daniel rubbed his face. “Peggy—”

“No, Daniel, you’re absolutely correct. I will invariably suggest explosives as the optimum course of action. However did you come to know me so well?”

“Peggy.”

“What do you _propose_ I do? Simply sit here with my head down and follow his orders?”

Daniel closed his eyes to brace himself _._ “Yes.”

“‘ _Yes’_?” she sputtered.

“For now. We need to stick to the wisest plan.”

There was a pause. “Well, you are the wisest, Chief.”

The noise of the connection cut off.

“Peggy,” he said uselessly. He looked at the phone.

“Ouch.”

Daniel hadn’t heard Jack open the door.

Jack paused at the threshold, sending Rose a wave as she drove off. “Trouble with the missus?”

Daniel hung up the receiver. “Lay off tonight, Jack.”

Jack gave a shrug as he nudged the front door shut with his cane. “You’re the one who signed up for that carnival ride.”

“I said, lay off,” Daniel snapped, grabbing his crutch. Faster than Jack, for once in his goddamn life. He closed himself up in his bedroom and undid his leg.

Not even a week and they were fighting. Daniel had been wrong about a lot of things when he moved out to L.A., but he was right about the distance. Absence made the heart grow fonder, but your brain would split in two.

He picked up the nearest book and stretched out on the bed, hoping to hear the phone ring. But it didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wonderful team is sad.
> 
> l0g0phile is a jewel.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

Peggy poked at her lemon pie. Pie was supposed to help. This one must be a shoddy knockoff.

Her day had been improving. She had made it to Angie’s final performance as a scorned half-sister—she had managed to _see_ Angie for once since she’d been back—and in spite of the small stage and the quality of the script, Angie had absolutely nailed it.

But when she bounced over afterward, flush with victory, to drag Peggy off to a party with the rest of the cast, Peggy felt the weariness beginning to sink in. The prospect of another restless night loomed ahead, as her mind prepared to run through new versions of things she could have said or should have said. It tempted her to forgo her bed entirely.

“That leaves us here,” she said to the slice of pie. “And you are letting me down terribly.”

She swallowed and felt her throat tighten. “Oh, lovely. Yes, let’s cry now.” She let her fork clatter to the counter and leaned on her elbows, covering her eyes. “Because I am a grown woman, and grown women cry when they can’t have their way.”

Cry and hang up the phone.

But he had no idea—no idea how it felt to sit in that office, going over those names that would lead nowhere. Her actions were pointless. _She_ became pointless.

Keep quiet. Don’t upset anyone.

She had known she would be on her own. She had known her stay had no end date. But she was supposed to be _working_. Not waiting around for Daniel’s radio report. Waiting for her orders.

_The wisest plan._ Daniel was right, and of course he was right, and it made her want to hang up the phone all over again.

Angie’s shoes clicked through the foyer. “Peg, you still up?”

Peggy sat up from her slouch, patting her cheeks and brushing her hair into place. “In the kitchen.”

“These things are killing me.” Angie hobbled through the doorway, attempting to keep walking as she removed her heels. “I can’t believe I let Evelyn talk me into—” She glanced up and stopped with one foot in the air. “What happened to _you_?”

“Me? I’m fine.” Peggy took a bite. “Just felt like a bit of pie.”

Angie’s gaze traveled down to the plate and back up. “Uh-huh. _Lemon_ pie. Got it.” She abandoned her efforts to unbuckle her shoe and plopped onto the stool beside Peggy. “Spill it, English.”

Peggy gestured with her fork. “Am I not allowed to eat lemon pie?”

“Sure. But you only eat it when you’re down about something.” Angie propped her elbow under her chin expectantly. “Are you gonna tell me, or do I need to get the schnapps?”

Nothing Peggy could say would throw her off the scent. “Yes, get the schnapps.”

Angie shook her head. “Always doing things the hard way, English.”

“Well, you know me.” It came out a little more bitter than Peggy intended, but Angie was distracted by the liquor cabinet.

“All we’ve got is something cherry.” Angie studied the bottle.

“Honestly I don’t much care.”

While Angie poured two glasses, Peggy looked for which pieces she could explain and which she had to leave out. She could say enough for Angie to understand. But when Angie took up her place on the stool again and fixed her with that round-eyed concern, Peggy found herself saying, “I snapped at Daniel last night.”

“‘Daniel’?”

Peggy forced herself not to correct to _Chief Sousa_. She had called him Daniel before with Angie. She knew she had. “We’ve been working together on the case—I told you last week that Chief Thompson was shot.”

Angie nodded, her brow crinkling. “But you said he’s doing okay, right?”

“Yes, he’s out of hospital. But we don’t know much more than we did the day it happened.” Peggy rubbed her temple. “I came back hoping to learn more here, and Daniel was going to keep working in L.A.”

“Pretty hard to work together across the country.”

“You’ve no idea,” Peggy muttered, poking at a dollop of custard.

“ _English_.” She read triumph on Angie’s face. “Tell me what happened with Agent Swoony.”

Did nothing escape her?

“It’s _Chief_...” Peggy exhaled, leaning heavily on her elbow. “…Swoony.”

“And?”

“And we’ve been…” Peggy waved a hand, hoping her casual tone would ward off a blush. What were they supposed to call it? “Slightly involved.”

Angie squealed. “English!”

Peggy managed a tired smile. “Yes, well, I’m afraid I’ve already mucked things up. I ended our last phone call…abruptly.”

“You hung up on him.”

Peggy let her silence speak the affirmative, drawing circles with her fork in the whipped cream on her plate. She had acted so childishly. “We were arguing, and I didn’t want to hear what he had to say.”

Angie frowned. “What were you arguing about, Peg?”

“What to do next.” Peggy abandoned her fork with a sigh. “We’ve found that there isn’t much I can do here to get any closer to answers. So for me, the sensible thing is to do very little.” She drained her glass. “Staying here, quietly. For how long, I don’t know.”

“Aw, Peggy.”

She looked up at Angie’s scolding tone.

“I thought you meant something personal. Just call him back and tell him you miss him! Do I really need to tell you this?”

Peggy’s cheeks warmed. “Angie, I haven’t done this in a very long time.”

“It was a pretty clear tip-off when you said ‘slightly involved.’” Angie pointed to the lumpy mess Peggy had made of her pie. “That ain’t ‘slightly involved.’”

Peggy smiled, sheepish. “I suppose it’s never been quite like this.”

Angie’s eyes lit up.

“I mean with the distance!”

Angie leaned closer with a smirk. “You sure?”

Peggy made a face. “I’m not sure of anything. Except how awful I was to him.” She reached for the schnapps bottle. “I know he was only—”

Angie grabbed the bottle before she could pour. “All right. Go call him. Before you have any more of this, because then I can’t let you.”

Peggy shook her head. “I can’t call from the penthouse. It’s…phone company issues. I’ve been going to Howard’s house to make calls.”

“So _go_.”

“Now?”

“Yes.” Angie snatched her glass away for good measure. “Now.”

\---

The Jarvises’ living room was more welcoming than Howard’s in more ways than one, soft wallpaper and a distinct lack of cigar smoke in the upholstery. Peggy would have felt she was snooping, if all of their personal items hadn’t been shipped off to California. But it was hard to feel like she was prying when she could imagine Ana there, simple and matter-of-fact.

_If Miss Carter feels more comfortable here, she must use the telephone as long as she likes._

Peggy smiled at the bright flowered throw pillows, doubtless Ana’s choice. That had been a difficult goodbye—the second one, when they knew there couldn’t be another last-minute change of heart. Her heart hadn’t changed. She had said goodbye in spite of it.

Peggy found the phone beside a wingback chair and took a deep breath.

Her voice came out small when he answered. “Daniel.”

“…Peggy.” She hated the caution in his tone.

No sense beating about the bush. “I need to…apologize. For last night.” She cleared her throat. “I let my feelings about the situation get the better of me. It was unfair to you.”

“Believe me, it was the last thing I wanted to say.”

“I know.” She pressed her lips together. “But it’s true. Without more information, we can’t take the risk. It’s just…”

“It’s hard.”

Peggy leaned her head against the wing of the chair. He sounded so far away. “Daniel,” she said softly, not finding any more words than that.

 “I’m glad you called back.”

“I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner.” She let out a noise of frustration. “We can’t even speak easily. I’ve _still_ got a tail on me.”

“I had a thought about that.” Some of Daniel’s gentleness faded. Business. “You said Corse hasn’t seemed suspicious of you in person?”

“Not particularly. Not like we expected.”

“Well, what do we know about their intel on you? What do they know you know?”

Peggy considered the question. She could picture Daniel now, could hear it in his voice—he was strategizing. She felt a flicker of hope. “They know that we know the Council exists. That we suspect the Arena Club. That we stopped Whitney Frost and lost Vernon Masters.”

“Yeah. And that’s it. Think about it—Whitney Frost comes in, kills half the Council in one go and then terrorizes the rest of them until she goes nuts. If the Arena Club is as big as we think it is, the ones left at the top are gonna be scrambling. You think they want to spend time worrying about Peggy Carter?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I think they’re hoping to write you off.”

Peggy frowned. “You think the surveillance will simply drop once they’re satisfied I’m not a threat.” It would make sense. The car stationed outside the penthouse was practically minimal. They hadn’t planted devices in the penthouse—she had checked again this week, and a third time.

“They have enough to deal with among themselves. If they can cross you off their list without getting their hands dirty…”

She heaved a sigh. “That presents a strong case for ‘keep my head down and follow orders.’”

“I know.” At least he sounded regretful. “But if you can convince Corse that your investigation of the Council ended with Whitney Frost, I think that’s what they want to hear. And it’s always easier to convince someone when they want to believe it.”

Peggy slipped off her shoes to tuck her feet into the chair. “And you think they will simply discount me, when not so long ago we attempted a full raid on the Arena Club?”

“There’s no surveillance on me,” Daniel pointed out. “Believe me, I’ve been looking. You, uh…” She imagined him scratching his head uneasily. “You make a lot of noise.”

Peggy snorted a laugh.

“I mean that you—”

“You are so flattering, Daniel. How was I not falling at your feet?”

“You get things done,” he said firmly. “Loud enough for people to notice. If you stop drawing notice—”

“And that won’t look _more_ suspicious, if I suddenly alter my behavior?”

Daniel fell silent. There were times she was right.

Peggy used her thumb to wipe the dust off the radio beside her. The original Benny Goodman conduit.

An idle image crossed her mind of Mr. Jarvis in glasses, and her thumb halted. “I think I know what to do instead.”

“What?”

Peggy sat up straight. “Make noise about something else.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any guesses where she's going with this?
> 
> l0g0phile, as always, catches my now/know typos and other more important things.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Peggy dives headfirst into her plan, and Daniel...lives with Jack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this chapter had a life of its own. Makes up for the past few running so short.

Daniel checked the lock on his office door and turned up the radio.

“Director,” Peggy said.

“Agent Carter.” A crinkle of static as Corse moved papers around.  “What can I do for you?”

Peggy had described him when Daniel asked. Tall and lean with a full head of gray hair. And a smile, she said, a smile you had to watch.

“About Chief Thompson’s case,” Peggy said, “I have a theory I want to pursue.”

Charging in. Daniel had gotten her to wait a day, to start putting out feelers before she made a claim out of nowhere, but she would get right to the point.

“I’m all ears,” Corse replied.

“I think Dottie Underwood is responsible.”

A pause. “Oh?”

“She pinned him to the floor with a table in interrogation, and she tangled with him again in Los Angeles. This would just be the latest.”

Another pause. Daniel sat tense, his hand clenched around his thigh.

“I’ve heard some interesting theories on how Dottie Underwood turned up in Los Angeles to begin with.”

Daniel squeezed his leg, his heart beating hard.

“I would love to hear them, sir, but I’m only concerned with returning her to the cell where she belongs.”

Daniel twisted the radio dial, but all he got was background static. Peggy and Corse would be staring each other down. And Daniel couldn’t picture Corse’s face, but right now he wasn’t sure he could see Peggy’s, either.

Then she spoke again, and Daniel knew the look on her face. Her eyes darting down for an instant, a flicker of weakness. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Director, her case is rather personal to me.”

Daniel held his breath. Bold—bolder than planned. A feint, playing into what they expected, as she always did so well. But it wasn’t a lie, and Corse would read the truth in it. And he should take her off the case for it.

But if the Council really did want her attention focused elsewhere—

Daniel could hear Vernon Masters’ oily voice. _I won’t kill you, because I won’t have to._ They wanted things clean. It gave them all their leeway to play dirty.

“Your theory is superfluous to the fact that Miss Underwood is currently loose on the street. Work with Agent Henry, but I need Ramirez running other angles for the shooter.”

Through the static, Daniel wondered if Peggy felt the same rush of relief. Her reply, when it came, hid any trace. “Thank you, sir.”

“And Carter—” The first time Daniel had heard Corse address her without a title. “Don’t make her an albatross.”

Those words lingered with Daniel long after Peggy left the office. He felt layers in them. At home that night he pulled out the poetry collection from his father and reread _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_.

A burden, a crime, that was the albatross Daniel remembered. But a line near the end stopped him.

_He’ll shrieve my soul, he’ll wash away_

_The Albatross’s blood._

Don’t look there for absolution.

“Yes, I’m familiar with Coleridge,” Peggy said when he mentioned it to her, but he could hear in her tone that she was somewhere else. “We have much more to go on than we had last year. I’ve been going through the contacts we established before the bank robbery. Something will lead to her.”

Daniel felt himself smile, a little rueful. He had seen this coming from the moment Peggy had suggested Dottie Underwood as a cover. She was never just a cover. But the truth of Corse’s answer was irrefutable. _Superfluous to the fact that Dottie Underwood is loose on the street._

Why, Daniel wondered, could there never just be one enemy?

But there was an upside to letting Peggy chase an enemy with a single face—even if the name and cosmetics changed. She brightened, even when they were short on leads and their contacts came up empty. She called L.A. to officially solicit their cooperation and then updated Daniel diligently every few days, whether they saw progress or not.

Their conversations were benign, for anyone listening in, and it kept them from having to schedule their communication to coincide with Jack’s physical therapy, but Daniel found himself missing her voice in his living room. He missed that change in her tone when she said his name without the background noise of the bullpen. When they were as alone together as they could be with all the miles between them.

But then Rose would call up or someone would stick their head in the door—or even more effective, at home, Jack would open his mouth—and Daniel would snap out of it. He couldn’t get ahead of himself, not with Peggy. One of them had to be able to rein them in.

And no matter how long he had been hung up on her, it was all still so new. Five weeks? Not even. And still only nine days in the same place.

“Tell me, really,” Jack said one night, “how long has that been going on?”

Daniel glanced up from his plate. “Has what been going on?”

“You and Carter. Was it before we saved your ass or after?”

Daniel gave him a look, but he was getting to the end of his second beer, and at least he hadn’t found dried spaghetti glued to the stove when he got home that night.

 _“Daniel, he’s bored,”_ Rose had said _. “There’s a lot worse he could be doing than cooking.”_

_“‘Cooking’ implies something edible.”_

“After,” Daniel answered finally. “But it was before we saved _your_ ass.”

Jack cracked a smile. “Yeah, I had a feeling about that vacation request.” He paused. “Wait, but she was planning on leaving until…” He blew out his breath. “You mean _that day_? Shit, Sousa.” But he was grinning. “That’ll be one to tell the kids. ‘And then Uncle Jack got himself—’”

“Hang on—there is no ‘Uncle Jack.’ Why would there be…” Jack was still grinning, and Daniel realized the words Jack was putting in his mouth. He scowled, his face going warm. “Knock it off.”

“But I still get an invite to the wedding, right?”

Daniel grabbed his crutch and left Jack with the dishes, ignoring the smug laugh that followed him. It only wheezed a little now.

He listened to the clink of the dishes for a while before he gave in and hauled himself up to help. They had been pretty fair about splitting the small stuff. And Jack teasing him about Peggy was a lot easier to take when he wasn’t just going on about Daniel’s torch.

“If you want an invite, you’ll have to quit…” Daniel trailed off. He hadn’t noticed the sound of the dishes had stopped, but Jack was leaning motionless on the counter, staring down into the sink.

Jack straightened up quick. “Did you hear these dishes calling your name, Danny boy?” He sniffed, feigning an itch on his nose as he reached for a dirty plate.

_Shit._

Daniel squeezed the grip of his crutch. He couldn’t turn around again. “Yeah. Something like that.”

He grabbed the dishtowel to start drying. Nothing else to do as he racked his brain for what would have gotten to Jack Thompson. It couldn’t be Peggy. Daniel would have picked up on that. But he couldn’t recall anything else that had come up.

They stood there clumsily washing and drying until Daniel decided that ignoring it was more uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “So you just really hate weddings, or…?”

Jack laughed, just barely. “Yeah, can’t stand ‘em.”

The tension eased a little, and they went on like any other night, except that Jack had never finished the dishes in silence. Daniel was about to head for the shower when Jack spoke.

“He was a friend of my father.”

Daniel turned.

“Vernon.” Jack palmed the clean glass in his hands, watching the reflections of the overhead light. “He got me into the SSR. Like getting a kid a pony.” He flicked an eyebrow at the glass. “And he was a rat.”

Jack looked up at Daniel, his eyes catching the light, and his jaw tightened. “Just makes you start to wonder.”

Daniel was at a loss. Selfishly, all he could think was _Peggy_. Even if she was caught up in the case and they only spoke over the sanitized SSR line, he had Peggy.

“Anyway.” Jack set the glass in the cabinet, and when he turned, the hurt was swallowed up in a hard expression. “Whatever bastard wanted me offed, at least that one was already dead.”

\---

The next morning, Jack was back in the kitchen, all smirks and wisecracks. For reasons beyond Daniel’s comprehension, Jarvis had brought over a blender.

It was just so damn _loud_.

Then on Friday, Peggy finally called Daniel at home.

“The car is gone.”

“What?” He switched the phone to his other ear.

“The surveillance car is gone. I haven’t seen it since yesterday morning. And no tail to the automat at lunch.”

He smiled at the triumph in her voice. “Are you calling from the penthouse?”

“Still the mansion. The privacy of the telephone isn’t so easily verified. But at least I can part ways with the coal chute.”

“Sorry?”

“Oh, have I not mentioned the coal chutes? Mmm, they’ll help you get into all sorts of trouble.”

“That’s an image.”

Peggy laughed, and Daniel warmed. “I suppose this means our plan is working,” she said. “And if our eavesdropping continues in vain, at least we’re getting closer to Dottie.” She gave a sigh that sounded like it would be accompanied by the thunk of shoes kicked to the floor. “Well, in theory. Still no news there.”

“We’ll get her.”

“Yes. We will.” Peggy paused. “And how are you?”

It had been a while since he remembered her asking. “I’m fine. Jack is…” Daniel conceded to Rose. “Getting bored.”

“Why do I get the impression you were about to say something else?”

He glanced at the bowl of smashed avocado that Jack had abandoned on the counter when Rose picked him up. “I could say a lot of things.”

Peggy’s undignified snort brought some consolation. “Find something for him to do at the office. Something small.”

“Like…filing?”

“Do I detect smugness, Chief Sousa?”

Daniel shook his head. “Hey, I’m just—”

“I do, yes, right there—a hint of smugness.”

“Are you waving your finger at me?”

There was a pause, and Daniel grinned. “You are, aren’t you?”

“ _Smugness_ ,” she sputtered.

He laughed. “Okay, okay, no filing.”

He lied. Filing was exactly what he proposed to Jack, managing a deadpan professionalism even as Jack looked like he was waiting for Daniel to pie him in the face. But that was the offer on the table, and Daniel knew he would take it.

The downside, of course, was that now they got to share quarters in the morning, and the evening, and the rest of the time in between. Jack kept his head down, more or less, but he seemed to find at least one opportunity every day to barge into Daniel’s office. He was rid of the cane, most of the time—that was probably part of it—but twice Daniel had barely turned down Corse’s radio in time.

“He’s a pest,” he told Peggy.

“Yes, I can imagine.”

She wasn’t a lot of help.

What Daniel couldn’t find a way to tell her was that giving Jack work didn’t fix anything but the mess in his kitchen. Daniel still caught that dark look on his face when the wrong subject came up. Not just Vernon Masters or the search for the shooter, but any mention of the SSR chain of command. Daniel couldn’t blame him. But he and Peggy had witnessed the difference between the plans they made against corruption and the plans Jack had made. Detonated or not.

Daniel did have help, though—he could never deny he had help, with Ana Jarvis bringing them casseroles and something she called an apple torte, with Rose driving Jack to every physical therapy appointment until he was allowed to drive himself. The other agents all did their part, treating Chief Thompson with a balance of camaraderie and respect.

Daniel tried to keep that in the forefront of his mind as he interviewed prospects to replace Vega and Harper and the others. And for the thirtieth, or fiftieth, or hundredth time, he wished Peggy were there. In each interview, he tried to include questions she would ask, but he knew she would notice things he was missing. He had hired Samberly, for the love of God.

But the thought of Samberly, of all people, gave him an idea.

“Rose?” He felt stupid for limping all the way down to speak in person. “You said there’s another interview tomorrow. Would you mind…sitting in?”

 _To take notes_ , he could have easily said, explaining it away, but he could picture Peggy’s frown. And he had been too honest with Rose about too many things to shortchange her.

Rose, of course, didn’t bat an eye. She covered a lot that wasn’t in her job description.

Daniel started back up the stairs and stopped mid-step.

\---

“Rose.” He stopped her the next day as she stood to go, her opinions on the last interview carefully taken down. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

She lowered herself back into the chair. “Fire away.”

“It’s been, what, six weeks since the Isodyne case? I never got to hear your thoughts.”

Rose looked surprised. “On…”

“On your involvement, mainly. Your role in the operations.”

She seemed to catch where he was going. “I…enjoyed helping the team, Chief. I gave what I had to offer. I would do it again.”

Daniel nodded. “I was curious what you’d think of bringing someone in part-time downstairs”—he tapped his pen on the interview notes—“and trying a little more fieldwork.”

It was easy to get a smile out of Rose, but nothing like that one.

\---

“You did _what_!” Peggy exclaimed on the phone. “Oh, I would kiss you.”

“It seemed like the next step.” Daniel was glad they only talked when Jack was out, because he felt like he was blushing. “She seemed happy.”

“Of course she was happy. _I’m_ happy, and I’m not even there to see it.”

 _About that_ , Daniel wanted to say, as Peggy started talking about solutions for the utter lack of female agents.

She hadn’t said anything about returning to L.A. since she had started back on the hunt for Dottie Underwood. On the calendar he ticked off her fifth week in New York, and with each day he felt less certain of where she expected them to lead.

His fifth week in L.A., he had already met Violet.

Not the same thing, he told himself. That wasn’t the same thing at all.

And, hell, he would follow _her_ —he hadn’t thrown out his sweater vests—but that wasn’t an option for him here. Jack wasn’t about to trade desks. Daniel and Peggy weren’t even sure Jack would still have a desk. As blasé as Corse’s leadership seemed, he was higher up on the chain, and things were shifting politically. If he wanted to maintain a closer eye on the SSR…

“One week!”

Daniel jumped at Jack’s shout and heard Peggy echo his alarm as the front door slammed.

“One week, Danny boy!” Jack pointed at the phone, spinning Daniel’s car key around his finger. “Is that Marge?” He leaned over Daniel and grabbed the receiver. “See you in a week, Marge!”

“What’s going on?” Peggy was asking when Daniel got the phone back.

He repeated it for Jack to hear. “Are you cleared to fly?”

“If everything checks out in a week.” Jack flopped onto the couch, his breath a little shorter than he pretended. Just one more moment Daniel knew too well.

But he knew the victory too. “Congrats, Jack.”

Not a moment too soon for either of them.

Jack looked at him when he hung up the phone. “So.” He lounged back lazily on the couch, but there was an edge to his voice. “You’re gonna send me back without a name?”

Daniel drew in a breath. No, they didn’t have a name. The whisper of an investigation into Hugh Jones and the other remaining Council members—as much as Daniel had dared while Peggy was under scrutiny—revealed nothing. Corse’s radio gave them nothing. Even if they had a name, Daniel wasn’t sure he wanted to give it to Jack.

“You said it’s Corse running the show in New York. What’ve you got on him?”

“Not much.” Daniel glanced at the phone. “Peggy’s been covering the case more than me.”

“I thought Carter was looking for Underwood.”

Daniel inclined his head in agreement.

Jack gave him a hard look.

Daniel hadn’t wanted to feed him the lie, not when it had been his life, but if Jack went back to New York ready to tear into the War Department, all three of them would be finished.

Not the War Department, he corrected. As of yesterday, they were under the “National Military Establishment,” with all the changes the name entailed.

“Nah, I don’t buy it.” Jack sat back again, crossing his ankles on the coffee table. “Underwood working for the Council? Only one reason Underwood isn’t in a cell right now, and she ain’t on the Council.” He eyed Daniel up and down. “Or is that two reasons?”

Daniel’s jaw tightened. He already had to live with what he had let Peggy do. “If you have something to say, then say it, Jack.”

Jack held up his hands. “I’m sure Peggy’ll find her. She did it once. Only took a year.”

Daniel exhaled. It wasn’t a night to fight with Jack, or whatever this was that Jack liked to do. “I’m turning in.”

He wouldn’t be able to keep dodging the questions. Only one more week, but if Jack pressed the issue before then, Daniel was backing himself into a corner. He couldn’t explain the real investigation. Even if they trusted that Jack would be on their side, and stay there, he was nothing but a liability—and in spite of his history with Masters, in spite of his family, in spite of the loathing in his voice when Jack mentioned the Council, Daniel didn’t trust him to stay on their side. And he hated that as much as anything.

But Jack was suspicious of Corse, friend of Vernon Masters or not. The look on his face when he said “send me back.” _Send me into the hornets’ nest._

“I don’t know, Peg,” Daniel said the next night, keeping his voice down even though Jack was at Stark’s poker game. “They’re already rearranging the office furniture in Washington. If he goes back to New York looking for a fight…”

“I don’t think he will.”

Daniel sighed, rubbing his forehead. “You haven’t seen him.”

“What do you mean?” The slightest note of alarm in her voice.

“He’s just… He’s a little different. Easier to handle, most of the time, but I told you back at the beginning—sometimes I see him struggling.”

“I thought his recovery was going well.”

“A different kind of struggling.”

Peggy was quiet for a moment, and Daniel wished they were having this conversation face to face. Jack’s history wasn’t his own, but he knew why it was coming up now the way it was. And Peggy understood the handful of things he had said about recovery as much as anyone could, but when he couldn’t look her in the eye, it became so much harder to say what he meant.

“What do you think we can do?” Peggy asked softly.

He shook his head. But she couldn’t see him. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I’ll be able to keep an eye on him.”

Daniel took a heavy breath. He hadn’t forgotten Jack’s words from weeks ago. _After I get the okay to fly, I’ll send her back_. But if that wasn’t what Peggy wanted—

“Unless…” She sounded hesitant. “Unless _you_ were…hoping for assistance with a case.”

He swallowed. They could talk about this. They should have just talked about it. “I was hoping, yeah.”

“Then I’ll speak with him when he arrives. I can make it clear that it’s in his interest to play nicely.”

“Because you’re very persuasive,” Daniel murmured. His heart thudded happily. He had been afraid for nothing.

“Yes, I am.” She paused, and her voice turned gentle. “Daniel, did you…did you think I had changed my mind?”

He felt his face flush. She made her plans seem so obvious. “We hadn’t talked about it. Sometimes things change.”

Silence, and then something that sounded like a strained chuckle. “Oh, God, we’re awful at this.”

“Yes.” Daniel rubbed a hand over his face. “Yes, we are.”

“You know you must _tell_ me what you want, Daniel. I can’t read your—”

“Well, the same goes for you. You hadn’t—”

“I did! What did I say before I left? I wanted to stay.”

“Peggy, that was six weeks ago.”

“Well, I haven’t said anything since to contradict it.”

Daniel blinked. He couldn’t find the words. “Peggy.”

“Yes, I…I see your point.” He heard her sigh. “This was certainly not the ideal beginning for a relationship.”

 _Relationship_.

Daniel rolled his eyes. He _would_ latch onto that _._ “But you want to come back,” he said, still halfway a question.

“I do. Though how soon depends on what happens when Jack gets here.”

On Corse’s response. On Jack’s attitude. Elements beyond their control.

They would do what they could. After Jack was cleared a week later, Daniel stopped in the guest room to relay Peggy’s request to meet—at the penthouse, before Jack even walked into the office.

Jack raised an eyebrow as he shook the wrinkles out of a shirt. “Your girl wants me to drop in at midnight?”

“Showing up at a Stark property isn’t exactly new for you.”

Jack chuckled. “You got a point.” He folded the shirt into his suitcase. “Hey, whatever Carter wants. That’s the motto in this house, right?”

Daniel lobbed a sock at him.

Jack’s last few days in L.A. had carried a different tone. Daniel hoped he had filled most of his life quota for time spent in the same room as Jack Thompson, but he had to wonder if maybe his house had been the right choice after all. Sometimes it wasn’t caring that a man needed.

He hoped Peggy knew the right thing to say to Jack.

Daniel sure didn’t, as they waited on the porch for the taxi to the airport. All he could think was how glad he was that he’d put two separate chairs on the porch instead of a bench.

Jack squinted out toward the street. “You know, this place was miserable in August, but I’m gonna be jealous in November.” He glanced at Daniel with a rare flash of sincerity. “Seems like it’s been good for you.”

Daniel nodded. “Setting up on my own.”

He meant setting up the office. For the rest, “good for him” was arguable. But there were other parts about L.A., simple things. The sunshine. A home with only three steps—no more crossing his fingers that the elevator wasn’t broken.

Daniel shifted in his seat. Last night Jack had held out his cane with an uneasy apology. “ _I’d take it with me, but on the plane…_ ”

_“I’ll take care of it.”_

Jack understood more now than Daniel would prefer. More than Peggy did. They couldn’t acknowledge it, but Daniel wondered what the bullet would leave behind. Not what it had left in its wake, but what would remain when the memories of recovery grew more distant. What would remain after they did trace the gun back to a name, and the case was closed—at least the part Jack would know about.

Jack cleared his throat. “Thanks for, uh…letting me trash your kitchen.”

“I’d say ‘anytime,’ but I think we both feel the same way about that.”

Jack laughed under his breath. “Yeah.”

The taxi pulled up, and he reached for his suitcase.

Daniel got to his feet. “Safe flight.”

“Take care of yourself, Sousa.”

Jack walked out to the street, no trace of the bullet. Not that Daniel could see.

“Oh—” Jack wheeled around as he opened the car door. “You should check the fridge. Left you something.”

 

It was a lopsided cake with white frosting. And on top, two snowman-shaped marshmallow people.

One was missing a chunk out of the bottom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and always for your lovely comments!
> 
> l0g0phile is appropriately appreciative of amputee marshmallows.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack returns to New York, and Peggy would just rather not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> l0g0phile: "I FEEL LIKE YOU WROTE THIS CHAPTER JUST FOR ME AND MY JACK LOVE"
> 
> Also featuring sides of Angie and fluff.
> 
> Edit: I don't know how to tumble, but I've decided it's time to stop lurking. May possibly start sharing thoughts awkwardly as I write. So if you feel so inclined (or if you see me suddenly following), you can find me as ink-dust on tumblr.

When Jack walked into the penthouse, Peggy realized she had been bracing for the worst. The last time she had seen him in the hospital had been a vivid reminder—because she needed another—of how quickly and definitively things could change. His face still too pale, his smile still too slow. His voice had sounded stronger on the phone, when he talked over Daniel, but the image in her head was of the hospital bed and the morphine.

But here he appeared much the same. A little thinner, a little less of a swagger in his step.

He flashed the same smile as he took off his hat. “Marge.”

Her own smile was patient. “Jack. You look well.”

“Well enough.” He waved his hat around the foyer. “Not a bad joint.”

“It serves the purpose.” Peggy led him into the living room. “Cup of tea?”

“I’d take a whiskey.” He scoffed lightly when she gave him an evaluating look. “I’m six weeks out of the hospital.”

“Barely.” She poured two glasses, inconveniently reminded of the last evening she had shared a whiskey. She cleared her throat. It would not do to look pining in front of Jack. “I wanted to fill you in on the situation in the office.”

“Corse.” Jack chose the chair facing the door.

“Daniel said you were familiar with him.”

Jack shook his head. “Just the name. And I got a feeling Vernon didn’t like him.” His lips curled in a wry smile. “So what’s he been doing?”

“Nothing as yet.” Peggy handed him a glass. “In fact he sounds quite glad for your return.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “You don’t buy that, do you?”

“I’m not sure.”

Jack slowly lowered his glass. “Peggy.”

“We’ve discussed the possible—”

“One of them tried to _kill_ me!”

Peggy narrowly kept from flinching. There it was, what Daniel had meant when he said Jack was different. But it wasn’t something new. Peggy knew that cornered look in his eyes. It had followed him from Okinawa.

Jack wasn’t a simple enemy of the Arena Club. He was a traitor.

“I realize that,” Peggy said softly. “But perhaps they understand that it could serve them just as well as a warning.”

Jack snorted. “What, now I’ll just fall back into line?”

“You know what happened when Daniel and I acted out openly. Vernon Masters wasted no time in taking command of the L.A. office. By force, when it became necessary.” Peggy’s jaw tightened at the memory of the pain on Daniel’s face. “Corse will do exactly the same here. That, I am sure of. For now, he seems willing to hand the office back to you. But that _will_ be contingent on what you do in it.”

Jack didn’t reply, his gaze locked on Peggy’s. As much as he knew what would drive her forward, she knew his.

His tone was flat. “So you’re telling me to smile and curtsey at the man who might’ve ordered me dead.”

Peggy wondered abruptly if this was how Daniel felt when he asked her to do something she hated. She knew the frustration in Jack’s voice, knew it bitterly. “It doesn’t mean we’ll stop looking. We _won’t_ stop looking. And you will be there as well, on the slightest chance that the one who gave the order doesn’t quite look you in the eye.”

Jack’s mouth pressed into a hard line. “Work from the inside.”

“In a manner of speaking,” she said lightly. She may have felt more ready than Daniel to enlist Howard’s help, but they were agreed about where to keep Jack. “A false sense of security could lend us an advantage.”

“What if it was all of them?” It was barely more than a whisper. Jack swallowed, not looking her in the eye. “What if they held a vote?”

Peggy let her expression soften. “Jack, they were torn to pieces by Whitney Frost. This was not the work of a fully-functioning Council. It was more likely one of Vernon’s connections.” Something about that niggled at her, but she took a drink to cover her pause and went on. “That may be why you haven’t been threatened again. The higher order may not have approved to begin with.”

For the first time, Jack looked thoughtful. “Vernon wanted me to dig up that file,” he said slowly, “rather than kill you.”

“Generous.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t gonna do it.” He drained his glass. “Besides, you’ve held a gun on me more times than I have on you.”

“I think we’re even, actually.” Peggy allowed herself a moment to appreciate the sudden swerves in conversation with Jack. With a few words, the tension eased.

“All right,” he said finally. “I’ll play along. For now.”

Peggy nodded. None of them could think further than “for now.” But Daniel had been right. If she hadn’t spoken to Jack, things could have gone very wrong when he walked into the office. Daniel had seen it.

She mulled that over after Jack took his leave, as she washed and dried the whiskey glasses. Daniel hadn’t heard Jack talk about Okinawa—Peggy felt certain she would know if he had. But she recalled another conversation, one that had been largely put to rest in an office chair, yet pieces of it lingered.

_I know desperation._

A hint, there, of a Daniel she didn’t know. A Daniel he hadn’t shown her.

Or maybe he had. Her memory of the night at Roxxon flickered in and out, flashes of events set too close together. All of the images were dark, but she remembered one kind of dark that was the backseat of the car, another hand pressed tight over hers, against her side. Pressing so hard.

She changed for bed, stopping in front of the mirror to trace the raised scar above her hip. Still red, but less tender when she kneaded with her fingers. No longer a spot to be so careful of.

Daniel would be. She hadn’t noticed that night as he kissed the scar on her front with all the rest of her. And then in the morning she had laughed at first, half muffled in the pillow and uncomprehending, when he lifted the edge of the sheet and pressed his lips to the small of her back. He didn’t laugh, and she realized.

The backseat of the car and Daniel’s ragged whisper near her ear. _Please_.

Peggy picked up the phone before she could think better of it.

“Peggy? I thought we were going to talk tomorrow.”

“Yes, we are.” She curled up on her side under the covers. “I just thought I’d hear your voice for a moment.”

“Are you in the penthouse?”

She adjusted the phone against her ear. “In bed, actually.”

A beat passed, and Daniel cleared his throat. “Oh, I…see.”

Peggy smiled. “Is something wrong?”

“Nope,” he said quick enough to make her smile widen.

“I was thinking I’d speak with Jack at the end of the week about continuing the Dottie Underwood case from L.A.”

“Hmm. It _is_ the last place she was seen.”

“That was my thought.”

They were quiet for a moment, something near to content.

“I miss you,” Daniel murmured.

If Jack refused to send her to California, he may find himself without an agent regardless.

\---

Peggy aimed for nonchalance with her cup of tea as she strained to hear even a scrap of the conversation in Jack’s office. Daniel would be listening, but they wouldn’t speak for hours afterward.

Then the brush of footsteps, and the door opened. Twin smiles on their faces, Jack and Corse shook hands again. Peggy scarcely dared to breathe as Corse faced the bullpen.

“Gentlemen…Agent Carter…it’s been an honor.” He clapped Jack on the shoulder. “I leave you in good hands.”

A few of the agents stood up to speak to him on his way out.

Peggy looked at Jack, surveying the scene from the doorway to the office. When their eyes met, the corner of his mouth twisted up in a grim smirk.

 _Well, there it is_ , he mouthed.

The elevator closed behind Matthias Corse, and Jack rapped on the doorframe for their attention. “All right. Happy to be back, we’re all happy. Now I want reports—I don’t care who’s first.”

The others descended into a shuffle of papers, and Peggy called Los Angeles.

“Did you hear?” she asked. “All is returned to normal over here.”

“Yep, sounds great,” Daniel answered.

Peggy breathed a sigh. She could wait to hear the details of the conversation until tonight.

Jack stuck his head out of the office. “Carter, is that Sousa?”

She resisted the urge to make a face at the assumption. “He sends his best.”

“Ask him how he likes the cake.”

“Cake?” Peggy repeated.

“Christ,” Daniel hissed.

“What cake?” she asked.

“No cake. I’ll talk to you later, Peggy.”

“Daniel—”

The line disconnected.

She scoffed, sending the phone a confused glare—interrupted by Jack cackling against the doorframe.

“ _Chief_.” Peggy raised her eyebrows meaningfully at the agents waiting to give their reports.

She made a mental note for later. _Cake_.

\---

Daniel’s response, when she pressed him, hardly satisfied.

“Thompson made a lousy cake before he left.”

“That cannot be the entire story.”

“It’s as much of the story that needs to be told.”

And then somehow—she could never recall what he had said, later—he brought up his notes on Jack and Corse so smoothly that she forgot the subject of the cake until they had already hung up. It was really quite irritating, the way he managed to derail her. Michael would have congratulated him.

That was a wistful thought.

Their conversation had drawn her to that mood. Corse had abdicated without a word against Jack, and underneath the uncertainty and danger of knowing his cards remained hidden, she and Daniel both felt the lure of peace. Jack was back and smiling, resting his feet on his desk and complaining when no one refilled the coffee. He didn’t pull Peggy off the Dottie Underwood case, and from the hints Daniel dropped, she suspected he had reason to believe Jack would approve another loan to L.A.

On the way back to the penthouse, her mind drifted west.

She could call up the image of it now. She knew the Auerbach office, knew the city with its much-disdained flora, knew Howard’s estate and how warm the kitchen smelled when Mr. Jarvis made tea in the morning. And she knew Daniel’s house.

This trip would be much different from the last.

“How’s Chief Jack?” Angie asked when Peggy found her in the kitchen, offering a spoonful of her ice cream. “I heard him leave after I got in last night, but I was dead on my feet.”

“He’s certainly happy to be Chief Jack again.” Peggy took a second spoon from the drawer and slid onto the stool next to her. “I’m happy to be back to dealing with the headache I know.”

Angie set the bowl between them. “And how’s Chief Swoony?”

Peggy rolled her eyes, but she’d never had a hope of fighting that one. “Daniel is pleased.” He did sound lighter on the phone, though that may have had less to do with Jack than with other plans. Peggy fiddled with her spoon. She would have to share those plans with Angie, and better to do it now. “We’re…”

“Oh my god, you’re engaged.”

“What?” Peggy felt her cheeks bloom pink. “Wh—No, we are not.” She blinked at Angie. “Do you honestly believe we’re in a position to be engaged?”

Angie shrugged. “You tell me, English. All I know is this is the _only_ guy you’ve been talking about for a year.”

“Not that long,” Peggy scoffed.

Angie raised her eyebrows and affected a straighter posture. “‘At least Thompson put me with Daniel again.’ ‘Oh, I’ll be late—Daniel and I are working.’”

Peggy cringed. Even with the wayward accent, Angie’s acting was growing painfully exact. “Yes, well…”

“‘Daniel recommended this.’ ‘Daniel doesn’t like that.’” Angie dropped the imitation. “And then he left, and you didn’t come home from work for three months.”

“We were in the middle of something import—”

“And then, ‘Daniel asked for my help in Los Angeles,’ and _poof_.” Angie licked the back of her spoon with self-satisfaction.

“He hadn’t, actually,” Peggy murmured.

“Hmm?”

“He hadn’t asked for me. But this time he has.” She darted a look at Angie.

Quiet comprehension. “When are you heading back?”

“I don’t know. It’s not yet been approved. But fairly soon.” Peggy squeezed Angie’s wrist. “I wish it didn’t also mean leaving again.”

“Hey, you’re gonna sign up first on the list when someone figures out how to put you in two places at once.”

“That will be Howard.”

Angie snorted in agreement. The first and only time Howard had roped the two of them into dinner with him had been as thorough an introduction as she could ever need.

Well, anything that began with “ _Watch this”_ was a thorough introduction.

“He’s over there too, isn’t he?” Angie asked.

“Relatively.” Peggy had left the Jarvises with the request to call if Howard strayed far enough to relocate them. Somehow she hadn’t noticed when it happened that all of the people leaving New York were ending up in the same place. “There are a number of reasons for me to be there, to be truthful.”

“So you’re staying.”

Angie didn’t say _permanently_ , and even though her meaning was clear, Peggy was glad not to hear it out loud. Nothing had been permanent, not since before the war. And before the war, she had been too young to question whether things only seemed to be.

“For now,” she said, remembering Jack repeating the same words.

There was something Michael used to say, wasn’t there?

_For as long as we may._

\---

Dread was a rather strong word. Peggy viewed this conversation more as the least desirable of obligations. But as Daniel had recently dealt with Jack more closely and more extensively than anyone should be forced to, Peggy would spare him asking for his girlfriend back.

She frowned. Girlfriend? It sounded a bit…girlish.

“Something wrong, Carter?”

Peggy glanced up to see Jack standing in front of her desk. The bullpen had cleared out considerably. “Not at all,” she replied.

Jack cocked his head toward the office. “You wanted to talk.”

“I did, yes.” Peggy followed him in, running over her words in her head. Things had shifted a bit between them since the Isodyne case—not since he was shot, because it had begun before that. Maybe since he had chosen to give her the Arena Club pin.

In any case, she hoped this would be marginally less uncomfortable than it would have been before. Though before Los Angeles, it wouldn’t have been a subject in the first place. And Dottie would have been locked safe within her six walls.

Peggy closed the office door. “I would like to discuss my current work.”

Jack ignored his chair, leaning against the front of the desk with one foot crossed over the other. “Yeah? Thought you’d be happy as a clam, what with getting to chase Underwood all over again.”

“I intend to catch her again as well.” Peggy pursed her lips. “Though there is an argument to be made in favor of pursuing her from her last known location.”

Jack’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you making that argument?”

“I am.”

He squinted, looked her up and down, and shook his head. “Nah. I’m gonna need a better argument.”

Peggy blinked. “What better argument do you imagine? She is my current case, and her trail begins in Los Angeles. Or began—we’ve already wasted enough time letting it go cold.”

“Your current case.” Jack crossed his arms over his chest. “See, I think you’ve got something else going. Little something on the side.” He tilted his head. “Left side…” He waggled his hand in a so-so movement. “Right side…” He gave a wincing click of his tongue.

Peggy’s mouth fell open. She closed it. “And here I had begun to expect better of you.”

His face softened. “Carter—”

“What is it that you would like to hear me say, Chief Thompson?” She planted her hands on her hips. “That I would like to return to Los Angeles for _personal_ reasons? Or that either side of Daniel Sousa would prove his worth better than your entirety?”

A slow grin spread across Jack’s face. “Yeah. That.” And he started snickering like the insufferable git he was. “Check in with me once in a while,” he added, waving her off.

Just like that.

“And do him a favor—take one day of a real vacation.”

With a barely-suppressed huff, Peggy spun on her heel, but she paused at the closed door. “Jack.” She turned back to him, choosing her words carefully. “We are attempting to avoid undue attention. Daniel and I.”

Like drawing a window shade, Jack’s smirk faded. He gave a nod. “I know, Peggy.”

 _I wouldn’t betray your trust_ , she had told him once.

“No one’s gonna hear about it from me.” He shook his head. “Without Vernon, I won’t be seeing those bigwigs anyway.”

Peggy smiled ruefully. “You might yet.”

But as she gathered her coat, that sneaking feeling returned, the twinge she had felt when they spoke in the penthouse.

“We’re missing something,” she told Daniel that night. “Something about Vernon Masters.”

“Masters didn’t know Jack had turned on him until they were already with Whitney Frost.”

Peggy’s breath caught. That was it. Right in front of them.

“I almost called you myself,” Daniel said. “What Jack said to you in his office, it got me thinking.”

“Matthias Corse seemed pleased to welcome him back, because he _was_ pleased.”

“Because as far as the Council knows, they have Jack right where they want him.”

Peggy sat down hard on the couch. “The Council had no reason to want him dead.”

The next question hung between them, over three thousand miles, opening into a void as wide as the rift. They had nothing.

“I need you here, Peg.”

She smiled despite herself. _Need—_ that was new. She tucked her feet up on the couch, imagining the one in Daniel’s living room. He was right. They couldn’t continue to work apart, not now.

 _You and me_ , he had said.

They would have one thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I written out enough phone conversations yet? Please get on the plane, Peggy, for everyone's sake.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Thank you extra for comments. You are de-lightful.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Peggy comes ~~home~~ back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM HERE. It has not been four weeks. It has been three weeks and six days.
> 
> Life stepped in with much maid of honor-ing (maid-ing of honor?) for l0g0phile, but this is also officially the longest chapter so far, and the new official curse word for uncooperative writing at my desk is "chapter 10," however! I am most pleased to finally present the long-awaited Peggysous reunion show ~~featuring fondue~~.
> 
> Also, success! I am now mildly social on [tumblr](https://ink-dust.tumblr.com/)!

Countdown: twenty-one hours.

Daniel unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk and added one more file to the stack. None of them seemed like much to go on, but they couldn’t start from nothing.

Starting over. He had done a lot of that in recent years.

But Peggy was coming.

Daniel’s mind replayed her last call.

 _“I can always arrange for a taxi, you know, if the office needs you.”_ He didn’t remember his indignant retort, but it had made her laugh. “ _Oh, Daniel, I love to tease you_.”

_“Yeah? Come and tease me over here.”_

_“Two o’clock on Friday,”_ she promised. _“Or a bit later, if the taxi runs late_.”

_“Peggy…”_

Her laugh again. Even over the phone line, it made his heart do flips.

She had a gift for that. He opened the top drawer and pulled out the photograph he had swiped from the Isodyne evidence. The lighting was terrible—not even Stark’s cameras could compensate for that—and her expression was caught between surprise and scolding, but it was the only photo of her that he had seen outside her file. And she was looking at _him_.

“Chief?” Rose stuck her head in the door.

“Hey, Rose.” Daniel tucked the photo away, glancing at the clock. Twenty hours, fifty-two minutes. “You ready?”

“All set.” She adjusted her gloves. “Thanks for driving me a bit early. The shop said the car should be fixed tomorrow.”

“Not a problem.” Daniel stuffed the files from the drawer into his briefcase. It didn’t hurt once in a while to get home while it was still light out. And this time tomorrow…

Twenty hours, fifty-one minutes.

“Rose, you moved that phone call up to the morning, right?”

“Sure did, Chief.”

“The one with…” Details weren’t coming to him.

“That one.”

He looked up at Rose and forced himself to take a deep breath. “Great. Thanks.”

A grin spread over her face. “Daniel, you’re a mess.”

He scowled, reaching for his crutch on the hook. “I’m fine.”

Most of the bullpen was still working, but no one questioned his exit, sending him off to “have a good night, Chief.” Daniel knew the Isodyne case and the scouring of the office had shaken everyone up, but he had a feeling some rumors of the whys and hows diverged sharply from the truth.

For one thing, the majority of them seemed to think he had been running the show, instead of completely failing to bring down the Arena Club and getting his office stolen out from under him. Daniel didn’t exactly go out of his way to correct them.

“You know, you _don’t_ have to come in tomorrow,” Rose said as he started the car. “Just take the whole day.”

Daniel shook his head. “I’ve got nothing to do. House is ready—” He stuttered a little and added, “for dinner.” He put the car into gear, ignoring Rose’s smirk in his peripheral vision.

She didn’t live far out of his way, in a little bungalow roughly the same as his, though it didn’t suffer from the same “baldness,” as she put it.

_“I just don’t have ‘stuff,’ Rose.”_

He had said as much to Violet too, but gentler, and with more willingness to change. For most of August, he had wondered whether he should get rid of those additions. The vase on his dining room table and the painting in the hall. The lamp Violet had caught him looking at when she took him shopping. It had reminded him of one at home.

And then gradually he had made decisions. The vase went in a box in his closet. The painting, he gave away. He kept the lamp.

“Did that thing offend you?” Jack had asked a couple days after the vase disappeared, gesturing toward the table.

Daniel shook his head. It was lovely. “Just never really right.”

He had known he was running away long before Violet said it. Maybe he had known from the beginning. And that was how he should have known when it was over—he should have known the minute he found Peggy in the aftermath of the explosion at Isodyne. When he ran toward her.

Twenty hours, twenty-nine minutes.

“Chief, you missed the turn.”

Daniel cursed. “Sorry.”

Rose waited a beat, and then put on her breeziest tone. “Boy, I’m excited Peg’s coming back, aren’t you?”

His grumble was lost under her gleeful laugh.

\---

When he got home, he stashed the collection of files in the bureau in the dining room. Everything L.A. had on Dottie Underwood. Everything on her known contacts. Notes on Jack’s old case files that Peggy had sent from New York.

Daniel wanted to weigh the probabilities, spread out all the options and start with the most likely. But beneath the options hid more options, and around the corner and behind door number three lurked options neither he nor Peggy would ever think of.

And once they lifted that lid, there was no closing it. The work would begin, and he would have to start negotiating just to get her to pause for breath.

Well, he could always use the practice.

Nineteen hours, fifty-six minutes.

Daniel needed a new distraction. Everything was clean. Shopping was done. He put fresh sheets on the bed, blushing for no one in particular and muttering to himself that it was preparation, not expectation. And not without precedent. And she had called him from her bed, for Christ’s sake.

Peggy Carter would make him lose his mind.

He was debating what to mess with for dinner when he spotted the car at the curb. “Jarvis,” he muttered, right as the knock came. Again.

At least that solved the dinner question. He’d told Ana last weekend that they were supposed to be done bringing him casseroles now that Jack was gone. But obviously they knew Peggy was coming, and he wouldn’t put it past Jarvis to try to feed her even when she went out for the evening.

Daniel drew in a patient breath as he opened the door, and then all of his words flew out of reach.

“I know,” Peggy said softly, a smile dancing around her eyes. “You didn’t think I was coming until tomorrow.”

“Peggy.” His breath came out in a rush, and her smile bloomed.

“Daniel.” She was a vision in a blue dress and red lips, quoting his terrible fumble back to him with so much sass.

He kissed her right there on the porch.

Whatever she was carrying clunked to the ground, forgotten, as she wrapped her arms around his neck, and the miles were gone, hours were gone. After so many days that had dragged by, it ended all at once.

“You think you’re sly,” he murmured against her lips.

“Am I not?”

Daniel let go of his crutch to draw her closer.

She didn’t move away when they parted, her eyes running over his face like she was relearning all his angles. “How have you been?”

He laughed under his breath. “I don’t remember anymore.”

Peggy pressed one more kiss to the corner of his mouth and smiled, lifting one hand from his shoulder to rub her thumb along his lip. “No doubt your neighbors will form a very favorable impression of me. Showing up at your front door and absolutely plastering you with lipstick.”

Daniel should return some kind of quip, but his lip tingled under her touch, and his brain gave him nothing but _Peggy_.

She looked good. He stepped back just enough to glance up and down, reflexively checking for any telltale lump of bandages, but he halted at the thing that had clunked to the porch. That was an overnight bag.

Peggy followed his gaze and blushed pink. “I hope you don’t think me too forward.”

Daniel shook his head, trying to rein in his grin. At least he could stop feeling self-conscious about the sheets.

“May I…?” She nodded past him into the house.

He shook himself. “Yes. Please.” _Jesus, get it together_.

But she was here. And she was staying.

Peggy peered at him as she dropped her bag at the end of the couch. “Are you all right, Daniel? You seem a bit…” Her smug smile betrayed any guise of concern.

Daniel scoffed. “You got me good, Peg.” He reached for her waist. “‘ _Two o’clock on Friday_.’ Yeah, right.”

Her hands came to rest on his chest, warm and teasing. “I thought I might be a better surprise this time.”

But when she met his eyes, Daniel caught something else under her smirk. Something heavier. This was what the distance had cut away from them, the way she wrote in the gaps between her words. _A better surprise_.

Did she still not understand?

“Peggy,” he started, and then stopped. He didn’t want to fight to convince her. “Did I ever tell you about my first day at the SSR?”

Not his smoothest introduction. The slightest frown creased her brow. “I don’t believe so.”

Daniel smiled. “So it’s ten o’clock in the morning. I’d met with Dooley, Thompson, a couple of the others. There’s a point here,” he assured her, leading her to the couch. “They were about to hold a briefing, so I joined.”

Peggy looked puzzled as she sat, but she didn’t let go of his hand.

 “I had a little pad where I was keeping notes on how they did things. First desk job—if I had no idea what I was doing, I figured I better be able to fake it.”

She smiled a little—the smile she had given him that day in the file room, but lighter.

“They get started, I’m all ready to take down topics and questions and who knows what else, and then _you_ walk in.” Daniel squeezed her hand, imagining for an instant the look on his face if his younger self could see them now. “I knew your record, I knew what you’d accomplished in the war—” He felt the corners of his mouth twitch. “I dropped my pen.”

Something flickered over her face, but he couldn’t read it. He let his gaze fall to his lap.

“Straight down at my feet. And I couldn’t pick it up—they’d be halfway done by the time I got down to the floor—and I couldn’t introduce myself to the guy next to me by asking him to get a pen for the cripple, so I just sat there with my blank notepad, like that’s what I’d planned. Just pretending to pay attention, because through that whole meeting, all I could think was why had none of them thought to warn a man.”

He looked up at Peggy. “I never saw that pen again.”

Her mouth opened and then closed again, her cheeks a new shade of pink. Was that too much of a confession?

Daniel wet his lips. “A difficult surprise, Peggy. Never a bad one.”

Peggy took a breath. “Well.” She glanced down, drawing his gaze to the sweep of her eyelashes and the slight curve of her mouth. “I am rather known to be difficult.”

“I can work with difficult.”

That won a smile. “Oh, can you?” Lacing their fingers together, Peggy swung one leg over his lap and settled there. “How about this?”

He aimed for unfazed, with debatable success. “This too.”

She brought her hands up to cup his neck, and his heart wobbled as her thumbs stroked his jaw. “I missed you,” she murmured, leaning in to rest her forehead against his.

Daniel’s eyes closed. Tenderness in Peggy lived in secret places, hidden corners he stumbled into by accident but never wanted to leave.

“Missed you,” he whispered. The words brushed her lips as she kissed his mouth, then his cheek, his chin, feather soft and fleeting. “Peg.” Not quite an objection.

“Hmm?” She nipped at his jaw and he stifled a groan.

“Really?” he said when he felt her smirk. “You’re going to walk in my door and go straight for the weak spots?”

Peggy’s lips grazed his ear. “I’m being a difficult surprise.”

“You’re being something.”

Okay, that was definitely a giggle. Her fingers curled in his hair, and he rolled his eyes at the twinge it sent south. She shouldn’t _know_ the weak spots yet. That’s what he got for consorting with a spy. She was probably up taking notes after he fell asleep.

Which also had its advantages. Her fingers tugged, and Daniel found her lips again. She wouldn’t have a trace of lipstick left.

And he wouldn’t have a trace of self-control. When Peggy did something with her tongue that sent a shiver over the nape of his neck, he pulled back enough to mumble, “Difficult is turning into dangerous.”

“Or is it just hard?”

“ _Peggy_.” He broke away, laughing, no doubt bright red.

She looked pleased with herself. “Am I wrong?”

“You’re—” Daniel’s hands tightened on her hips as she ground down on his lap. His laugh came out hoarser. “You want to do this right here?”

“Why not?”

He let his head tip back against the couch. “She’s gonna kill me,” he told the ceiling.

But it left his neck exposed, and Peggy was never one to miss an opportunity.

Daniel’s eyes fell shut, and he suppressed a sound. “You know how much shit I got from Rose about that hickey you gave me?”

“No, I believe I missed that part. Shall we try it again?” Her fingers started quietly working at his shirt buttons. “Although—” she laid a kiss at the hollow of his throat “—I have other things in mind.”

He let out a breath. “More secret plans?”

“I’ll share them, if you like.” Peggy ran her hand down his chest to his belt and lingered there, tracing the buckle with her index finger. “What do you think?”

“Keep talking.”

She moved off his lap, sparking protest until she knelt between his knees.

A different protest. “Peggy, you don’t—”

She paused with her fingers hooked in his belt. “I don’t…what?” That eyebrow lifted. “Have to?”

He flushed at the absurdity when she said it out loud.

“You’re not listening, Daniel.” She laid her hand on his thigh. The right one.

His breath felt shallow. She could say more with that one touch than all her words. “I’m listening.”

She stroked up and down his leg, her eyes never leaving his. “Are you?”

He nodded.

She bent to kiss his thigh, high enough that only the fabric of his pants kept her lips from his skin. High enough that his brain reeled at the sight. He hardly noticed her hand leave his other knee and finish with his belt.

Because it had to be a side effect of the blood leaving his brain, Daniel excused the briefest stray thought as Peggy turned every sliver of her razor attention to his cock.

 _Sure, Krzminski_.

But Daniel couldn’t pretend he had ever seen this coming. Not her hands on him, her mouth, her _tongue—_ The look in her eyes as she rose and slipped her underthings off under her dress. Her searing kisses when she climbed back onto his lap, her skirt hiked up between them.

When his cock slid slick against her, they broke apart.

“Peg—”

“Forgot the damn—”

“Condom?”

“Yes. Well, no.” She snatched something from her bag and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving him panting helplessly on the couch. The image would have made him laugh if he weren’t painfully hard.

But she came out of the bathroom without her dress, and he decided that after Peggy nude and Peggy in his dress shirt, Peggy in a black slip was a close third.

“Forgiving one interruption,” she said, kneeling over him again. Her hair brushed his neck, as rich as the dark silk.

He caught her shiver as he ran his hands up her sides. “You did come prepared.”

She trailed her lips along his jaw to his ear. “Please. Don’t you know me at all?”

“I hope so.”

“Oh, you do,” she said, soft and intimate, and when she drew back he saw something in her expression that recalled two full years since he had lost that pen.

Two years since she had stolen it.

Peggy had never asked for that. Never asked for a torch or a pedestal. The torch he had made his peace with, but the pedestal he worked hard to chip away, still had to work sometimes. Her list of felonies helped.

Because he wanted to look her level in the eye, like they were now. He could never handle those eyes, knife-sharp and deep enough to pull him under, and he really hoped she didn’t look at anyone else the way she was looking at him.

“I’ve wanted you,” she whispered.

He reached down to touch her, but she caught his hand. “Later,” she said, her eyes speaking a promise as she rose on her knees and took his cock in her hand. “This, now.” Her voice hitched as he entered her.

Daniel cursed under his breath. How was she so wet?

Her hands found his hair again, pulling him in, and she devoured him like a scene out of his most desperate dreams.

There was a good kind of desperate. This kind was all grabbing hands and grinding hips, stifling heat and nothing between her and him inside her.

It ended with Peggy sighing breathlessly into the crook of his neck, a sound that floated past his brain to settle in his chest. “Goodness, Daniel.”

“Yeah.” He felt his heartrate slowly even out as he traced her spine with his fingertips. “We, uh…got to the point there.”

She didn’t stir, her soft cheek resting against his. “Seven weeks.”

“It felt like longer.”

“However long, I’m not eager to do it again.”

“No.” He caressed her hair. Pretty hair, he noted dumbly. “Not on my list.”

She somehow hitched herself even closer, curling her arms tighter around him and resting her head on his shoulder. Another wave of warmth flooded Daniel’s body. Tenderness in Peggy.

They sat quietly entangled, matching breath for breath, until Daniel felt the room drifting away. He shook himself awake.

Peggy’s question was a wordless mumble as she lifted her head.

“Falling asleep is also not on my list.” He stretched his neck. “Not yet, anyway.”

She hummed in agreement, playing with his shirt collar. “And what is on the list?”

“Let’s see.” Daniel felt a faint gnawing in his stomach and realized the daylight was almost gone in the living room. “Dinner?”

Her eyes widened like he had reminded her of something vitally important. “Dinner, yes. Dinner would be lovely.”

\---

“I’m starved,” Peggy said around a bite of pear, trying to catch the juice dripping down her chin. Daniel was tempted to laugh, but it felt like a miracle to have Peggy in his kitchen again, much less this Peggy—her shoes abandoned, her curls falling flat (that might have been his fault), her smile lighting every inch of the room. She had put her dress back on but missed a button, and there was no way he was telling her. Let himself have that reminder that she was here, that they had erased the distance between them. They hadn’t lost that intimacy.

He did feel an echo of the dinner before she left, as she watched him cook from the same perch in the corner, but tonight was different. They weren’t shouldering that sense of futile escape, two kids trying to hold onto a couple of hours of innocence. This felt more like a beginning.

Daniel glanced at Peggy. He was starting to think his cooking stool had found a new permanent purpose.

She followed his gaze to her seat. “Oh, did you need this?”

He shook his head. “Not now. Thinking of getting a second one.”

“I certainly won’t object. Easier for me to impose on you properly.”

“You’re a little far away to be imposing.”

“Believe me, I can impose from any distance.” She scooted the stool closer anyway, until her knees grazed his hip. “Is it nearly ready?”

“Getting there.” Daniel nudged the tomatoes into the bowl with his knife.

“It’s a salad. It cannot possibly take any longer.” When he didn’t reply, the stool edged closer. “Are you ignoring my impatience?”

“This being the impatience of a woman who raided the fruit bowl before I even got in the kitchen.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I’m ignoring it.”

“Daniel Sousa.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, with the unexpected effect of snuffing out whatever she had to follow up. That was twice now, after his office. Daniel didn’t know what sort of changes to credit, but he decided he liked being the one to trip up Peggy Carter.

His inward smirk must not have been so inward, because her eyes narrowed.

“Yes?” he said when she still didn’t speak.

“You’re infuriating and I missed you.”

Daniel grinned.

Over dinner they exchanged stories from coast to coast, details the ticking phone meter hadn’t allowed. How Rose was doing on her first cases, the highlights of Angie’s performance. All the kindness the Jarvises had shown him.

Daniel didn’t even share all of that. After a point, it felt like too much, too sacrificing. The number of times Jarvis had driven Jack around; the afternoons Ana spent with him, every Tuesday and Thursday like clockwork. Jack hadn’t volunteered what they did or talked about, and Daniel didn’t dare to ask. But Ana had been there. Everyone had been there for them.

That’s what he told Peggy. “I’ve really got to do something nice for Rose. At least she’s compensated for casework now, but nothing covers carting Jack around to physical therapy.”

“In a perfect world, I believe Jack would be the one charged with doing something nice. For all of you.”

A vision of the white cake flashed in Daniel’s head, and he coughed. “Well…arguably…” He gestured to Peggy. This was the only thing that mattered.

“You were listening,” she said abruptly.

“Yeah?” He had done a lot of listening. More listening than he ever wanted to do again.

“When I asked Jack for assignment in L.A.”

Oh. Daniel fought a smile. “I don’t think I remember that.”

Peggy frowned.

“Something about my…left side? Right side? No, wait…” Her frown was pinching into a scowl, and he could barely get the words out without laughing. “…Personal reasons?”

“I hate you both.” But when Daniel slid his hand across the table, Peggy tangled their fingers together. “It sounds as though I took more offense on your behalf.”

“Hey, I don’t have any issue with you defending my honor.”

He had actually snorted a laugh at _left side, right side_ , but it wasn’t every day he got to hear Peggy’s fur bristle in his defense. In all honesty, it may have been the first time he had ever gotten to hear it. Because she knew he could handle whatever those idiots threw at him. She had never needed to be told to let him stand up for himself.

 _And I’m grateful_. Her voice echoed in his head.

“You’ve gone far away,” she said gently.

Daniel blinked and refocused on Peggy. “What was the first thing?”

“What?”

“That day in the conference room when you asked me not to fight your battles. I said I didn’t like the way they treated you, and you said that was another thing we had in common.”

Peggy’s eyebrows lifted. “Did I?” She glanced down almost shyly. “You remember that more clearly than I do.”

He shrugged. “Something I didn’t want to forget.”

“Well…” Her gaze turned distant as she recalled. “I don’t believe I meant it to be a second thing. It was another on a list of many.”

“You kept a list?”

She did blush then—he was sure of it, even under the dining room light. “I did not.”

Daniel felt a growing smirk. “You sure?”

“Perhaps a…a _mental_ list.”

He was caught between the smirk and a stupid grin. “And what’s on this mental list?”

Peggy’s lips pressed into a line. “I’m afraid you don’t have clearance for that file.”

“Hmm.” Daniel stroked the inside of her wrist with his thumb. “Will I get clearance?”

Her expression shifted, just a little. Just enough. “If you’re good.”

Daniel could feel the stupid grin winning. Peggy was making innuendo at him. _Peggy_. “You don’t think I’ll be good?”

She gave him a look that felt like a challenge.

“We’ve finished with dinner, have we not?” She slid out of her seat and swept their plates away. Daniel heard them clink in the sink before he even got to his feet, and then she was in front of him again.

“That was quick.”

“I dislike wasting time.”

“I’ve also heard something about your impatience.”

Peggy hooked a finger in his collar. _Sinful_ , that was the word for her expression.

Her smile grew as she pulled him toward his bedroom. “Oh, you’ve no idea.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading - I hope this one was worth the wait. And thank you always, always for your kind comments.
> 
> My thoughts on Ana spending afternoons with Jack in recovery were inspired by Sholio's lovely "All In."
> 
> Also, many thanks to the discussion on tumblr about Daniel's agents and office dynamics post-Isodyne. Pilfered with gratitude.
> 
> l0g0phile is a rare treasure of this world and also now WED!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is fluff and more fluff because they get ONE DAY OK

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't deprive Peggy of her share. Plus this is not original fiction and therefore I don't have to cull the precious character bits. Hmph.
> 
> I still successfully exist on [tumblr](https://ink-dust.tumblr.com/)!

The sky bloomed pink through the gap in the curtains, light falling softly on Daniel’s face as Peggy crept out of bed. She stole his shirt from the floor but shivered anyhow on her dash to the toilet and back. She never slept naked, for caution’s sake if nothing else—to be prepared to face whatever might wake her. But nothing had woken her last night.

Indeed, she had fallen asleep practically mid-sentence, draped over Daniel like a blanket, and was lost to the world until the sun rose. Perhaps miracles did happen.

Daniel’s breath was still deep and steady, not quite snoring as Peggy slipped back under the covers and eased down on her side. How unusual it felt to have someone sleeping beside her. She had made camp with the 107th in Russia, and one night last winter Angie’s sudden fever had worried her too much to leave her alone, but those were practicalities. _This_ was…

Daniel’s breathing shifted, and then his arm curled lazily around her waist. Peggy smiled without opening her eyes. This was pleasure.

“Good morning,” she said.

He hummed sleepily in reply, scooting in until his chest pressed warm against her bare back.

She let out a contented sigh. “Did you sleep well?”

“Mmm. You?”

Peggy trailed her fingers along his arm. “I hadn’t slept like that in years.”

Daniel lifted his hand to smooth her hair away from her neck. “You know you hog the bed?”

“I do know that.”

She felt his breath puff out in a laugh, and then his lips at the back of her neck, her shoulder. He tucked his knee behind hers. “You’re lucky I take up less space than I used to.”

Peggy let her fingers brush his hip, just a light touch. Even after the weeks apart, Daniel seemed more at ease with her. This time he hadn’t hesitated when they undressed, hadn’t tensed so much when she touched his legs. Now his right thigh rested flush against hers, a vulnerability that made her want to stay in bed for hours more.

Daniel raised his head. “What time is it? I have to be at the office for—”

Peggy laughed softly. “No, darling.” She reached for his arm as he started to sit up.

“I had Rose schedule a call with—”

“No, darling.”

He caught her tone then. “You…” Comprehension dawned. “…Rose.”

“Everything has been scheduled for Monday.”

He shook his head, a wry smile tugging at his mouth. “Rose knew.”

“Of course she knew. I needed her assistance.” Peggy lay back down on her side, pulling him with her. “You can thank her later.”

Daniel grabbed her around the waist, mouthing at the curve of her neck and shoulder. “Oh, I can, can I?”

Peggy felt a shiver at the touch of his lips. “Not until you’ve finished here.”

Daniel’s thumb traced the underside of her breast. “That’s gonna be a long time.”

“You know, I am feeling surprisingly patient this morning.”

Daniel took full advantage of the fact, letting his hands wander over her body without the slightest hurry. Gentle at first, and then lingering, and then teasing, until she growled at him and he finally touched her the way he ought to do.

She moaned when he slid into her, and then gasped. This was different. Daniel could thrust easily this way, his arm hooked under her thigh, holding her with a strength she knew lay in him but still left her breathless.

Peggy, by contrast, held no control.

For an instant she braced herself. Ready to feel trapped, powerless. But it was Daniel she felt, warm against her back, his lips doing something shiver-worthy at the nape of her neck and his cock hitting somewhere inside that drew raw sounds from her throat.

“How do you want it?” he whispered.

She made a reply that was more a whine than anything else, because how could he manage to hold her in the palm of his hand? How could she let him?

But she let him, let him hold her and have her, not even bothering to muffle her moans in the pillow. Some sounded like his name.

No, it had never been like this.

They lay for a long time afterward, his arms wrapped around her and his face buried in her hair. “Peg,” he murmured.

“Daniel,” she answered, twining her fingers with his. She had started calling him Daniel long before she meant to.

“Thank you for sneaking behind my back and moving everything to Monday.”

“Well, I was advised to take one day of vacation.” She pinched his thumb. “So you have one day, Chief.”

Arriving at his door had felt surreal, yet this morning seemed nearly more so. The smallest things snared her attention—the soft creak of the floor beside the bed, the warm scent of Daniel’s shirt collar and the silly thrill to wear something of his. It felt like an act of claiming.

_This is real, between us. This is how close I’ve let him stay._

Daniel’s eyes met hers in the mirror, and he smiled from the edge of the bed. When had his smile started prompting hers? She couldn’t stop it if she tried.

Looking at his reflection, Peggy realized when he bent his head again that he was tending to his leg. She couldn’t make out what he was doing, but the prosthesis waited beside him. And she should step out to give him privacy, as she had the first morning. She knew she should, but curiosity proved too much. At least for this, a routine as much a part of his life as sleeping and waking.

“Is this interesting?” He glanced up only briefly.

Peggy flushed a little. “Well, it’s…”

“You can say yes.”

She saw the corner of his mouth curl up as he fit the prosthetic in place. “Yes.”

So she owned up to it, leaning back against the chest of drawers to watch him finish with the straps. Neither of them said any more, but Peggy felt a flash of memory from the first days after they met. How he had made her pause, the soft-spoken young man with a guard up behind his eyes. Even then, she had thought it faltered sometimes when he looked at her. And yet to find themselves here…

To find a tin of tea in his kitchen cupboard, to see his ears turn pink.

“It was the kind you always kept in the office.”

And with a jolt, she knew all at once that she would have no more shy wondering about Daniel.

“Yes, it is,” she said, her heart nearly aching. If he ever asked her, much later, she would have to be truthful. It was the tea tin that had got her.

Peggy pressed a kiss to his cheek and lingered there, breathing him in. The words formed on her tongue, not quite ready but growing. And if he noticed something there in her pause, maybe it was time he did.

\---

She had specifically said nothing about her arrival plans beyond requesting to borrow a car and declining Mr. Jarvis’s offer to drive her. It would only have led to awkwardness, had she said that perhaps they shouldn’t expect her back before morning, and she would be a poor agent if she couldn’t smuggle a small bag into a car unseen.

As a slight oversight, however, she had given no such thought to her return.

She did have to return—if Daniel insisted on calling the evening a “real date,” that demanded proper readying, including a long bath and a certain red dress that Angie had talked her into buying last weekend.

_Chief Swoony’ll be the one swooning, trust me._

All of that aside, as Peggy drove through the gate, she acknowledged that she had been out for nearly twenty-four hours without any pretense of a case or even a true social engagement. It was fortunate her mother couldn’t monitor her time with Daniel, because they were missing the mark of a proper courtship by miles.

But someone else was…if not monitoring, then waiting at the door with extreme over-interest. Mr. Jarvis appeared relieved, gleeful, and embarrassed, by turns, and Peggy couldn’t mistake the dash of smugness in his tone as he pronounced, at four o’clock the next afternoon, “I trust you had a pleasant evening.”

“Yes, thank you.” She dodged his attempt to take her bag. “And thank you for the use of the car—I won’t need it this evening.”

“Will you be dining in, Miss Carter?”

“Er—no…Chief Sousa will be able to drive me.” She refused to act more flustered than Mr. Jarvis but doubted her success. “I’ll just freshen up a bit,” she added briskly, already striding down the hall.

The purpose of a long bath was threefold. First, for the obvious; second, for the hot water to soothe the…soreness, of a few different kinds. And third—third was to allow herself time to think.

Footsteps echoed in the hall, and Peggy paused with her blouse half-undone, but they continued past her door.

One advantage to dealing with Mr. Jarvis over Angie: he would not follow her into her room demanding the details.

Oh, she missed Angie, though. And today she felt she wouldn’t mind so much being pressed for details. It had been so long since she had details like these—bits that made her smile involuntarily to remember as she adjusted the water. Every ounce of this was good.

Peggy sank low in the tub, closing her eyes and relaxing each of her muscles in turn. Most often she used the bath to work out a problem of some kind, but the problems were put on hold. For one day, she had promised. And when she let the water strip all of that away, she was left with a quiet bubbling of anticipation, and excitement, and a small helping of nerves.

Silly, to be nervous for Daniel. Their long, lazy breakfast had led to a long, lazy lunch at the pier, and calling this dinner their first proper date didn’t keep her from snorting at the fact that it would be their fourth consecutive meal together. But she had begun to consider the very real possibility that this first date could be her last.

She wouldn’t breathe a word of that, not even to herself, but she wanted to look it in the face for what it was, what it could be.

When the water turned cool, she shook her thoughts away and focused on the more immediate. Daniel hadn’t specified “swanky,” but she had a feeling about the sort of place Daniel would consider for a date. The new dress would do nicely.

She had just chosen a slip to pair with it when there was a knock at her door.

Peggy hastily tied the sash of her robe. “Mr. Jarvis?”

“No, it is me, Miss Carter.”

“Oh!” Peggy brightened. “Please come in, Mrs. Jarvis.”

Only her head at first, peeking around the door, but then Mrs. Jarvis came dancing in and threw her arms around Peggy. “Miss Carter, I am so happy you decided to return.”

Every time Mrs. Jarvis embraced her, the lingering weight in Peggy’s stomach lightened just a little. _I made my own choice to face them_ , Mrs. Jarvis had told her, one of the nights before Peggy left. _You have done nothing but support me._

“I’m so sorry not to have seen you yesterday,” Peggy said. “I wasn’t here very long.”

Mrs. Jarvis made a dismissive sound. “Hardly important.” She drew back with a pointed look. “I know that I am not the only one who is happy to have you back.”

Peggy ducked her head, resisting the urge to fiddle her sash. “Indeed.”

“Is Chief Sousa well?”

“He is.” Peggy’s smile probably resembled the schoolgirl she thought she had left behind in England. She cleared her throat to distract. “He says you and Mr. Jarvis were far too generous to Chief Thompson while I was away.”

“There is no such thing. However, I admit we did our best to take care of them. You should have seen them, constantly—” Mrs. Jarvis caught sight of the dress hanging off the tri-fold mirror and let out a delighted gasp. “This is what you are wearing? Miss Carter.” She moved closer to examine the fabric with expert hands. “It’s beautiful.”

“My friend Angie agrees. Which is no wonder—you would love Angie.”

Mrs. Jarvis threw a smile over her shoulder. “Then we shall have to meet.” She plucked the hanger off the mirror. “Come, I must see it on.”

Peggy found herself talking as much as listening as she dressed, sharing stories of horrid outfits from her childhood and experiments with rouge gone wrong. Mrs. Jarvis enjoyed the tale of the bandit-masked raid at school even more than Jason had done, tipping back on the chaise with a hoot of a laugh.

“Would you believe that Mr. Jarvis once told me a similar story? He insists that he was forced to follow the other boys, but I know my husband.”

“Your husband is a great deal more than what he claims.” Peggy remembered telling him something that effect, but not quite the same. Perhaps she should say it more often. Her voice softened. “We are indebted to him for a long time to come.”

“For fetching Mr. Stark’s car, you mean?” Mrs. Jarvis sounded puzzled. “So that you could stop the…” She waved her hands to indicate the rift. And Peggy realized the version of events Mr. Jarvis would have relayed. _I fetched the car_ , just as if they had ordered him to.

“For the very idea of it.” Peggy fastened her other earring and faced Mrs. Jarvis. “We all stood there dumbstruck as Daniel was about to be…” She blinked sharply. She had written her report, but she hadn’t told the story like this, aloud, or to anyone. “Mr. Jarvis was the only one of us who found a plan, and it was a plan that worked. It saved us all. And it saved Daniel first.”

Mrs. Jarvis was quiet, and Peggy busied herself putting away her other jewelry.

“They are both exceedingly fond of you,” Mrs. Jarvis said softly. “Edwin and Daniel.”

“Mrs. Jarvis, I had _just_ finished my make-up.”

Laughing, she passed Peggy a handkerchief to dab carefully at her lower lids.

A tap on the door—this time, Mr. Jarvis. “Miss Carter, I believe Chief Sousa is here.”

“He will have to wait!” Mrs. Jarvis called back. “Just one moment.”

Peggy turned at the catch in Mrs. Jarvis’s voice to find tears slipping down her cheeks. “Mrs. Jarvis!” she exclaimed, pressing the handkerchief back into her hands. “You needed this far more than I did!”

Mrs. Jarvis laughed again. “That may be so, but I am not going out.” She dried her eyes. “Thank you for telling me what Mr. Jarvis would not boast himself. I’m not surprised in the least, by either fact. And it’s Ana, to you,” she added firmly, lowering the handkerchief to her lap. “If I have convinced Chief Sousa, then I will accept nothing less from you, either. We are friends now.”

Peggy squeezed her hand. “Peggy, then.”

The weight lightened a little more.

“Now—” Ana hopped to her feet. “There is a very fine gentleman here for you.”

\---

Very fine, indeed. The sunset on the water was something out of a dream, but Peggy’s eyes were drawn to the man across the table. His smile came so easily tonight, his manner relaxed. If pressed, she would say Daniel Sousa quite liked taking a woman out on a date. She had certainly never seen that suit in New York, and when he leaned in close, she caught a clean scent that made her want to keep him from moving any farther away.

He was also all too observant, as her attention didn’t escape him.

“Yes, Mr. Sousa?” she finally huffed at his smirking eyebrows.

“ _Mr_. Sousa?” It put him off successfully.

“This is my vacation day. You have no other title.”

“I’m not sure that’s how it works.”

“I think it works however I want it to work.” Peggy swiped the orange slice from the rim of his glass. Hers was already long gone.

Daniel watched her suck each segment from the peel. “I get the feeling you run with that philosophy a lot.”

“I do hope you’re aware of that by now.”

“I’m all too aware.”

“And yet here you sit.” She draped the empty orange peel carefully back over his glass.

“Here I sit.” He hooked his finger over the peel to keep it from falling as he took a drink.

Peggy snickered. “You indulge me too thoroughly, Daniel.”

“Do I?” His tone was soft, his eyes softer, and she had to look away. Her smile was blushing as she gazed out at the water.

Daniel had chosen a lovely spot. The menu, the view of the bay, the music drifting on the breeze. The candles grew brighter as the sun shrank away, and couples were beginning to dance.

She and Daniel looked no different from the others. No hint at the gun hidden in her garter, no sign that tomorrow they would wake up to hunt down a would-be murderer. Tonight they fit anyone’s picture of romance.

 _We’re not those people_ , she had said, the sort who would beg each other to stay when they had to go. But people weren’t merely one thing or the other. Peggy had never been one single thing in her life. And they could be more than what they had been.

As the music turned slow, Peggy rose and offered her hand. “Indulge me once more.”

Daniel’s eyebrows lifted, and she prepared to counter a wry remark, but he smiled. “Only once?”

She shrugged. “Or twice.”

He leaned his crutch out of the way and took her hand. “Daily, you mean.”

“Did I not say so?”

They moved a few steps from the table, and Daniel pulled her close.

Now this, Peggy decided, this was what dancing should be. They swayed gently, his hand warm at the small of her back and her fingers tracing the back of his collar, their temples resting together.

She felt his breath brush her ear. “There was something I wanted to say to you at Stark’s, when you showed up in this dress, but I think I just stared at you like a dope. Did that say it well enough?”

“Mmm, I got the general idea, yes.”

“Good.”

They turned slowly in place, and for a moment the world faded, leaving only its axis. Maybe it wasn’t just the tin of tea that had got her. A little of this, too.

Peggy stroked her thumb over his neck. “You roll your eyes at Jack Thompson when he isn’t looking.”

“What?”

“That was the first thing we had in common.”

Daniel chuckled in her ear. “And the second?”

“Oh, you’ll have to wait for more.”

“They’re not all about Jack, are they?”

She pressed her lips together and hoped he couldn’t feel her smile.

“Peggy…”

“The man did bring us together.”

Daniel laughed. “As a common enemy?”

She hummed. “We are a team, are we not?”

Peggy felt him smile then. “Yeah.” His lips grazed her cheek. “Partner-in-crime.”

Over his shoulder, she watched the sun sinking below the horizon, and her own smile wavered. “We have a great deal to face tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“But even then, we…” She searched for the right words. “I’ll need you to tell me, in the midst of everything ahead—because we can’t wait until it’s over.” She curled her fingers around the back of his neck, like any woman in love. “Tell me when we need to dance.”

The band started up faster, but they didn’t move, swaying with his cheek pressed to hers. “I will,” he murmured.

Peggy held him closer in the candlelight, playing with that word in her mind. _Partner_. And she spoke a silent dare to the gathering dark.

 

\----------

 

Outtake #1:

_(things my mind gleefully suggested that were entirely inappropriate to the story moment)_

 

Peggy, by contrast, held no control.

For an instant she braced herself. Ready to feel trapped, powerless. But it was Daniel she felt, warm against her back, his lips doing something shiver-worthy at the nape of her neck and his cock hitting somewhere inside that drew raw sounds from her throat.

 _Well,_ she supposed _, sometimes you have to put your faith in others to get the job done._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! and double thanks for your lovely comments.
> 
> l0g0phile is a gift to America and reads for me even when she's falling asleep.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they begin again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life has been noisy and interfering - thank you for sticking with me.

The teakettle whistled as Daniel stepped back to survey the scene. Everything they had fit on Stark’s dining room table.

Peggy had brought an armful of notes from New York, and Daniel had the borrowed files from the office, but most of it felt like paper laid out just to fill up the space. Their leads were thin. Their foundation was wobbly at best. They were meeting at Stark’s mansion in the middle of the night like fugitives.

For an instant he wondered if it would have felt like this, if she had come to him. If he had helped her then instead of hunting her down. 

Peggy’s stocking feet approached from the kitchen, and she handed him a mug.

“So,” she said, warm at his elbow as she looked over the spread. “Here we are.”

This was what starting over looked like.

“Jack’s old cases.” Daniel gestured to the left end of the table. “The Pence incident. Leviathan. Guys who just don’t like his face.”

“The lab technicians at Greystone,” Peggy continued. “One still unaccounted for.”

“Dottie Underwood.” Who had nothing to do with Jack, their instincts agreed, but she held her own row of space along the far side of the table, perpetually a player in this twisted game.

“And then everything else.” Peggy scanned the right end of the table, where the collection fragmented into short bulleted lists and scraps of notepaper scrawled on sideways. _Bar fight,_ one of Jack’s suggestions read. _Guy waited to get the jump on me when I left._

In fairness, they had asked him for every possible lead.

Daniel picked up a sheaf of notes in the lower right corner. It stood out among the rest, the one piece with a concrete link to the bullet in Jack’s chest. Jack and Peggy had each written out everything they remembered from the missing file. June 1944, Agent M. Carter.

She let out a soft exasperated sound when she noticed what he was reading.

“Peg, that file was the only thing taken. It has to be involved.”

“Perhaps it does. But it’s nonsense.”

“Could it have _any_ legitimate basis?”

She made a motion between shrugging and shaking her head. “It’s an S.O.E. file. I wasn’t even with S.O.E. in 1944. I’d already been working with Steve for a year.” She took the pages from him, her eyes skimming Jack’s writing. “If it is somehow legitimate, it wasn’t written about me.”

“Did you know another Carter in the S.O.E.?”

“Not one beginning with ‘M.’” She lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Though I hardly know every name that passed through S.O.E. They _did_ trade in espionage.”

More questions, then.

Later that week, Daniel called Jack, asking him again about the file, about the contact who had delivered it.

“He’s an old friend, Sousa. He’s not on your list.”

Daniel was trying to come up with a better response than _maybe he should be_ , but Jack read something in his silence anyway.

“No, Sousa, all right? Listen—”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Jack made a sound like a needled cat, and Daniel got the feeling they had gotten to know each other a little too well. “I gave you everyone who belongs on that list. Don’t go throwing in every buddy of mine just ’cause—”

A beat passed, and Daniel wondered what Jack wouldn’t let himself say over the SSR line. _Just ’cause Vernon was rotten._ Or was it something deeper, darker, that Jack wouldn’t admit over any line.

Jack took an audible breath. “Just trust me.”

The words were quiet and stilted and Daniel didn’t know how either of them was supposed to salvage that.

“Okay,” Daniel said finally.

“Okay.” Jack cleared his throat. “So how’s Carter doing?”

Reflexively Daniel’s eyes went to the window, where he could see Peggy combing intently through a folder at her desk. This week had revealed an embarrassing tendency for his gaze to wander to her in the middle of phone calls or paperwork or really anytime, but the first time she caught him looking she had made a face that was teasing and blushing at once, and he decided not to mind.

“You could ask her yourself,” he told Jack.

“Nah, don’t want to bug her.”

Daniel snorted. “Right.” He snuck another peek at Peggy and smiled. “She’s doing great.”

When she had stepped in as a senior agent in July, his agents had all been green enough to fall into line, ranging from respectful to terrified. Now, with half of the office hired new all over again, she could carve out any niche she wanted. Currently that meant following thread after finer thread toward Dottie Underwood, but Daniel had found that she could be persuaded to take a break on a few conditions.

“She’s been taking Rose into the field.”

“Rose,” Jack echoed. “Huh. Well, good for you.”

“She’ll keep you updated about Underwood. And for the rest…” Why did it still have to be so damn hard to talk to Jack?

“You’ll let me know.”

They were all grasping for that sense of confidence. To talk about _when_ , not _if._ But so far the late nights at Stark’s just had them pacing in circles. Daniel and Peggy traded headaches and eye strain like playing cards.

“There has to be something here,” Daniel muttered that night, tossing another folder aside. “Are you seeing _anything_ that…” He glanced at Peggy and trailed off.

She sat with her elbows on the table, her face cast down, studying something that glinted in the light. When she noticed him looking at her, she laid her palm flat on the table. The Arena Club pin clinked against the wood.

“Just because they didn’t go after Jack…” She let out her breath. “They’re still out there, Daniel. Still _in here_.” Her hand conjured the SSR around the table.

“They’re in everything,” he said quietly. That was what Rufus Hunt had said, with a fear in his eyes that punched Daniel in the gut.

Peggy lifted her gaze from the pin to meet his. “You asked me to hunt them down. Together. To find out how deep it goes.”

“Yeah, but—Peg, the answer is _deep_. I know what I said, but for—”

“Yes, but we have one advantage.”

He rubbed his face wearily. “And what’s that?”

“Half the Council are dead.”

Daniel shook his head. “You know they’ll just fill those seats with more.”

“Precisely.”

He raised his eyebrows at the note of triumph in her voice.

“We do know that. They’re old men, they’re set in their ways. They call themselves the Council of Nine, well, they have to be nine, then, haven’t they?”

Daniel picked up the end of her string. “Which means promoting from within. Changing up.”

“Which means chatter. If we can identify the ones selected…” Peggy reached for a fresh sheet of paper. “How closely have you been following the remaining four?”

“Not closely. They didn’t put eyes on me for a reason, and with you being watched in New York, I wanted to keep it that way.”

“Then we have no time to waste.”

\---

Daniel returned to Jack’s list of Vernon’s cigar buddies with a different angle. Over the next week, he sketched out a profile of each known member of the Council, active and inactive, combing for patterns. Employment history, government or private sector, paths that would have crossed. He laid them all out on Stark’s dining room table.

The energy industry for Hugh Jones, press for Mortimer Hayes, banks for Paul Driscoll and Lawrence Bertrand. But if the Council aimed to widen its sphere, they could be pulling names from anywhere. Daniel followed other links, photographs from social clubs and fundraisers.

Peggy sat across the table, steeped in Dottie Underwood.

Or she seemed to be. “They will have abandoned the Arena Club headquarters,” she remarked, glancing up at him, “but not its member list. That’s still useful.”

She returned to her notes like she had never surfaced, and Daniel couldn’t help but smile.

He agreed with her, but getting their hands on that list was a different story. He sifted through the names they had compiled, the same pages over and over, tugging restlessly on his hair. Profiles were a start, but men like these traded in more than power. They worked with trust, and the façade of trust, and a bare list of names would show him none of that. He suppressed a groan of frustration.

“Daniel?”

He shook his head, resting his forehead in his hands. “I’m fine. I just wish we had eyes in there.”

He heard Peggy shift in her seat, and a page slid away from him. She was quiet for a moment. “Mr. Jarvis.”

Daniel lifted his head. “Peggy.”

“Daniel, we have trusted him with—”

“I know what we’ve trusted him with. But he doesn’t work in that crowd, Peg. Not as a member, and I doubt they’d believe him as anything else.”

She let out a sigh, slumping forward. “Yes, I know.” She burrowed her thumb into her temple. “I know.”

Daniel watched her eyes wander listlessly over the pages, the Arena Club overlaid on Underwood. Two of the last things anyone needed. The last time he had checked the clock, the hands had passed midnight, and he didn’t want to see them now.

He pushed his chair out from the table. “Hey. Come here.”

She looked up and her brow furrowed.

“Come here,” he repeated.

With some reluctance, Peggy rose and rounded the table. She laughed a little when he beckoned her onto his lap, but she came willingly. Daniel pulled her close, his hands at the small of her back and hers on his shoulders. Her thumbs snuck above his collar, cool against his skin, and he let his forehead rest against hers.

They sat in the quiet, just sharing space.

“It’s late,” he murmured.

She hummed softly.

“Too late for me to drive home.”

Her lips twitched. The nights he had stayed, she was always the one to say so. “Is it?”

Their noses brushed, then their lips, and he felt the tension begin to seep from her spine. With her hand curling around the back of his neck, he could almost pretend it had always been this simple. And for him, Stark fiasco aside, maybe it had.

Peggy drew back. “I have a better idea.” She tugged him up from the chair and led him to the couch on the far side of the room.

He stretched out on his back and chuckled at her satisfied smile when she moved on top of him. “You going to have your way with me right here?”

“Goodness, no, that would be far too scandalous.” Her words were undermined a little, whispered against his lips. “It’s late—I’m simply ensuring that we…rest.” Her lips brushed his jaw.

Footsteps on tile.

Peggy went still above him. It had to be Jarvis—the steps were too slow and heavy for Ana. Maybe in the dim kitchen he wouldn’t notice them in the other room. Daniel couldn’t see a thing from their position. The refrigerator opened and closed.

They weren’t hiding anything. Daniel had now shared more than one awkward breakfast table with Jarvis. But they really didn’t need to share this.

The footsteps moved closer and stopped.

_SNAP_

It was almost a wet sound. He and Peggy exchanged an uncertain glance, and she gingerly twisted around.

“Howard!”

Daniel pushed himself upright.

Stark stood watching from the kitchen archway with a fiendish grin, gnawing on a carrot. “Don’t stop on my account.”

Peggy stood up with twice as much grace as Daniel—no surprise there—brushing at her clothes indignantly. “Your wit does you no credit.”

“No, by all means—good for you, Peg. Chief.” He nodded at Daniel, cracking off another bite. “That’s what the couches are here for.”

Peggy narrowed her eyes at him. “And what are _you_ here for?”

Stark smirked. “Charm.”

“Why wasn’t that obvious,” Daniel muttered.

“Hey, Peg, I thought I got to approve all your boyfriends.”

“You were mistaken.”

Stark let out a snicker, and Daniel wondered yet again how he and Peggy had wound up on a first-name basis.

“I was under the belief you were out of the country, Howard.” Only a fool would miss her hint, but Howard Stark would ignore it.

“I was. Some committee in Washington wanted to have a word with me. Real cranky bunch.”

Peggy’s eyes widened, her expression completely changed. “Howard.”

Stark waved it away with a sweeping motion of the carrot. “I was done with Hollywood anyway. There’s bigger stuff out there. Speaking of, you should come out to the facility sometime. I’ll give you a personal tour.” He wheeled around. “Glad to have you back, Peg. Don’t wear him out.”

Daniel and Peggy shared a look that said more than either of them could have voiced.

“You’re still hung up on that place?”

Daniel’s head swung around to Stark. Standing over the table. Reading their research on the Arena Club. Daniel gripped his crutch tighter.

“Howard,” Peggy started.

“I can get in there, if you want.” Stark crunched on the carrot. “Got to be easier than whatever you’re doing here.”

Peggy glanced at Daniel, asking the question, but he didn’t know his own answer. They hadn’t planned to bring Stark in until they had a plan that needed him.

“We already played that card to slip inside the first time,” she said, sidestepping. “And after that memorable afternoon, I highly doubt they would…”

Stark’s smirk grew wide and flat. “Please. That was an in-and-out. I told you, I’m here for charm.”

Peggy looked at Daniel again. Maybe this was the plan, right now.

She caught his slight nod. “You do realize what you’re suggesting, Howard. This is not an ‘in-and-out,’ as you say.”

“We need information,” Daniel said. “Plural.”

Stark’s mustache curled. “Lucky for you, I’ve been waiting to check ‘spy’ off my list of hopes and dreams.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical note (my first!): the committee Howard mentions is the House Un-American Activities Committee, which aimed to identify suspected Communists. In 1947 they had a particular focus on the film industry, and many who were issued subpoenas lost their careers in Hollywood. See anything about the Hollywood Ten for the most prominent incident, where the group actually denounced the committee's investigation and were sentenced to prison terms. Since Howard brushed it off, I didn't want to linger in narration.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, especially after so long, and for your precious, perfect comments. They encouraged me all the way through this chapter.
> 
>  
> 
> l0g0phile is steadfast and beautiful and makes appropriate use of capslock to express her feelings.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Stark household witnesses Howard the Spy, and encounters another familiar face.

Howard the Spy operated much like Howard the engineer or Howard the scientist—avidly, efficiently, and impatiently. After a week, he brought back a complete member list, and then spent the next two crossing off the bit players with the sort of amused disdain Peggy could imagine in a casting call.

“You’re certain?” she asked after every third elimination.

“He asked how McCauley’s son was liking Harvard.” Howard sent her a dour look. “It’s Yale. Out.”

He paused before circling a pair of names at the bottom.

“What, who are those?”

He frowned at her leaning over his shoulder. “Gossips. We’re about to get friendly.”

To Howard’s disappointment as much as anyone’s, he grew no closer to learning the location of the new Council headquarters. But by the middle of November, three members on the Arena Club list earned invitations to a Stark poker game. When Howard summarized his reasoning, even Daniel was impressed. Figures prominent enough to look advantageous, not so high up as to be reaching, progressive enough to be interested in Howard’s future over his past.

“I hate to tell the doc,” Howard muttered, adding from his list of regulars to fill out the table. “He’s been here every week. Terrible player. It’s great.”

“Jason? Why can’t he…” But as she said his name, Peggy remembered Howard’s surprise when they had found the Arena Club pin planted in Jason’s home. “I’ll speak with him.”

Howard raised an eyebrow.

“What would you say otherwise? He’ll hardly believe you to curry favor with anyone who would object to his presence. Give me that tour of your facility tomorrow and I’ll speak with him.”

Howard directed his eyebrow toward Daniel across the table.

“Oh, would you grow up,” Peggy snapped.

“I hope you’re not looking at me,” Daniel said without taking his eyes off his notes. “She doesn’t like that.”

Howard’s eyebrows flattened. “You two aren’t as much fun together.”

Peggy and Daniel shared a look that privately disagreed.

“You don’t object, do you?” she asked him later, as they walked out to his car. “To my explaining a bit to Jason.”

“As long as it’s not enough to put anyone in danger. Us or him.”

Peggy shook her head. “Not a single name. And he won’t ask for one.” She stopped at the driver’s side door. “After everything else, I just can’t have him believe that—”

“I know, Peg.” Daniel kissed her softly. When he drew back, he looked as though he were about to say something more, and her stomach fluttered for reasons she couldn’t name.

“You don’t have to go.” She felt foolish saying it when he had stayed over just two nights ago.

He smiled. “Why, are you gonna miss me?”

Peggy lifted her chin. “I wouldn’t want you to miss _me_.”

“Oh, is that it?” Daniel traced his thumb along her jaw. “Too bad.”

“You’re a sap, Daniel Sousa.” She could feel her own daft smile.

He flashed her a smirk as he climbed into the car. “Yep.”

\---

Howard’s Malibu construction was far from finished, but Peggy could see that it was an impressive undertaking. He forced a protective helmet onto her head—“Can’t have the Chief on my ass if you get conked”—but showed her around without attempting to explain what window frames and drywall were.

“And what is it exactly that you plan to do here?” she asked as he pointed out the spaces for labs and offices, a garage on one of the lower levels.

He had his favorite grin on. “Energy.”

“Not, I hope, as in ‘Isodyne.’”

“Aw, Peg, you never trust me.”

She stepped around a ladder. “Historically a risky endeavor.”

Howard barked a laugh. “Fine—no, nothing like Zero Matter. Still too early to say any more than that.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, surveying the site like he could see his creations forming before his eyes. “But it’s going to be big.”

Peggy hoped quietly that this project would stick for longer than the studio. And it seemed it would. This was the sort of work Howard did because it kept him up at night, not because it would hang his name in lights. The sort of work he was meant to do.

He had set up offices not far from the construction, “for inspiration.” They found Jason in front of a drawing board reminiscent of the ones at the mansion. The numbers he was writing along the bottom may have been nonsense to Peggy, but the scattered papers and the half-empty cup of coffee on the table painted a scene she knew well. And another reason to hope that Howard would keep this project alive.

“Peggy,” Jason said in surprise. He straightened up, brushing chalk off his hands.

“I came to see what all the fuss is about. How are you, Jason?”

“Good. Great.” He nodded at Howard. “Mr. Stark has some extraordinary ideas.”

“And don’t go spilling ’em.” Howard pointed at each of them in warning and turned on his heel, calling for “Louise.”

“Treating you well, I hope,” Peggy said as his voice drifted down the hall. “I hear you’ve become a regular fixture at Howard’s poker table.”

Jason chuckled bashfully. “I should ask for a raise—he’d get it right back.” He met Peggy’s gaze. “And how are you?”

That was what she had always appreciated in him, that genuine warmth. “I’m well.” She smiled around the word. How true it felt. “I’ve returned to Los Angeles for the time being, working with Chief Sousa—with…Daniel.” She glanced down, but she caught Jason’s nod of comprehension, kind and gentle.

“But I did come here, believe it or not, to discuss Howard’s poker game, because I’m afraid this week you will be deprived of it, and it’s rather my fault. Howard agreed to aid with an investigation by cozying up to a few unpleasant fellows.”

Jason squinted a little. “I see,” he replied in a tone that said he didn’t.

“He couldn’t reveal the case to you himself, and any explanation for excluding you would ring false. Particularly if he’s forced to invite them again in the future.”

Jason smiled again. “It’s just a poker game.” But she saw a flicker in his expression that hinted at understanding. Damn the world that had never been fair to him.

“Still,” she said, “I hope it’s sorted quickly.”

He nodded. “Me too. Thank you, Peggy.”

“It’s good to see you again, Jason. And good luck,” she added with a pointed look at the chalkboard.

His laugh followed her out. “Oh, I’ll need it.”

\---

The rest of them could do with some luck as well. But without assurance of that, a careful plan would do.

Howard fiddled with the radio. “Can’t say I ever thought I’d be bugging my own house.”

“Sir, I’m not sure that you’re the one doing the ‘bugging,’ as it were.”

Howard stared at the pair of legs sticking out from under the table. “Who made the bug, Jarvis?”

There was a long pause where Mr. Jarvis seemed to consider not responding. “You did, sir.”

“Make sure you get it all the way under there. Can’t have our friends getting their hands on anything I don’t plan to show off.”

Peggy knew she was making a face when Howard snickered. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Peg.”

She pinched her eyes shut. “That gutter is just so near with you around.”

“You know, Peg, I’ve changed my mind. You’re still fun.”

Strictly speaking, they could have chosen any room in the house to set up the receiver, but the lab was the safest spot if any of the guests went wandering. As Peggy and Daniel listened to the sounds of their arrival, she mustered her patience for the evening. Even without having attended a Stark poker game, she knew all too well what awaited—a room full of men growing progressively more drunk, progressively more ornery as they lost progressively more money.

“Stark’s been good at this,” Daniel commented. “He’s marked, what, four candidates to watch?”

Peggy skimmed the member list. “Bonner…Harwick…Peterson…Yates. Howard says the gentlemen invited tonight each know at least one of them personally.”

“We’ll see if he can get them talking.”

The hours were as riveting as expected. With one ear tuned to rubbish upstairs, the situation in the lab deteriorated to making faces at each other and holding staring contests. Daniel wrote out acronyms for each of Howard’s suitors: **C** an’t **A** **L** ousy **D** ick **E** ver **R** etire; **A** chtung: **D** on’t **A** sk **M** e **S** hit; and the one that made Peggy especially glad it wasn’t a two-way radio, **T** aco for a **H** ead, **OR** **N** ear **E** nough.

“You are terrible,” she chided through her laughter, though even to her own ears it sounded more like praise.

There was a tap on the glass door—Ana.

She wore a pleased smile. “It seems Mr. Stark’s parties are more amusing below ground.”

“Please ignore Daniel—his respectable appearance is an utter lie. Oh, what’s this?” Peggy peered at the tray in Ana’s hands.

“Cake. And tea.” Ana set it down between them.

“Ana Jarvis, you are more than we deserve.”

Daniel made a sound of agreement. “I’d invite you to join us, but no one else should have to listen to Adams yap about the dairy industry.”

“Is that what he’s talking about?” Ana moved closer to the radio and gave a sudden laugh when her gaze fell to the table. “‘Taco for a head’?” Daniel reddened, but Ana only laughed with more delight. “You have a way with words, Daniel.”

Peggy didn’t bother to hide her smile. Their team had grown—just a little, just to the bounds of the house. It felt right.

Over the radio, Howard cleared his throat. “So those systems are really going places. I might have to look into it.” Peggy hoped she was the only one who could hear the suffering in his tone.

“Now, if you want to talk _going_ places”—that was Calder—“you want to be in advertising. Stan Harwick’ll show you proof of that.”

Thorne had a nasty cough. “Boy, he’s all the way up there now.”

“In advertising?” Howard asked.

“In everything.”

Peggy looked at Daniel. He had heard it too, that echo of Rufus Hunt.

_Harwick?_ Daniel mouthed.

Silently Ana excused herself.

“He does seem like the man holding all the keys,” Howard said casually, so breathtakingly casually.

“Yates says he’s about to be.”

There was a pause, the soft crackle through the speaker. Peggy wished desperately that they could see the table. Then the conversation shifted, moving away.

“Do you think…” Daniel started.

“I don’t know.”

They sat in silence as the evening wound to a close, and the men’s voices faded out of the room.

Footsteps on the stairs made Peggy lift her head.

Howard pushed the door open. “Harwick.”

“You’re sure.”

“There’s a look they get when they want to hint at you-know-who in you-know-which-back-room.”

“And Yates as the source,” Daniel added.

Howard nodded. “Harwick is in. Maybe Yates too.”

Peggy looked down at her notes. “That leaves either three or four to go.”

“The problem there is I need to get closer. Calder and Thorne are tapped out. You can tell.” Howard leaned his elbows on the lab table. “And I don’t think Hugh Jones is going to take it well if I start trying to schmooze his replacement friends.”

Daniel flipped the radio off, the sudden quiet magnified in the absence of the static. “So we’re stuck again.”

“We’re nearer than we were,” Peggy said. “We can look deeper into Harwick and Yates.”

Howard let out a sigh, reaching up to loosen his tie. “But stuck. Yeah.”

\---

Peggy wasn’t wrong. They had plenty to carry on with, new lists of associates and the specific question of whether Yates would be inducted as well. At the least, the hours they spent after work didn’t feel quite so futile. Peggy had fewer dreams filled with endless blank pages.

“Miss Carter?”

She groaned at the third knock, now unavoidably awake, and buried her face in Daniel’s shoulder. Usually Mr. Jarvis gave her room a wide berth when Daniel stayed the night, still seemingly unsure, after six weeks, of how to manage the situation. And today of all days—a proper holiday, with no obligations for either of them. Even if it was a Thursday.

“I do hate to disturb you, but Chief Thompson is in the kitchen.”

“ _What_?” It came out muffled.

Daniel muttered a curse.

Peggy lifted her head. “Is there an emergency, Mr. Jarvis?”

“I don’t believe so, no. Though I’m fairly certain he is polishing off the cinnamon muffins as we speak.”

“All right, just…keep him there.” She let out a sigh. Jack always had a gift for timing.

“Not really what I planned to do this morning,” Daniel grumbled.

Peggy laughed under her breath. “Nor I.” She twisted to plant a kiss under his jaw. “Later, Chief.”

“Yeah, why do I get the feeling he’s going to get in the way of ‘later’ too.”

“We’ll see about that.” She slipped out of bed and grabbed the nearest blouse that wasn’t wrinkled. “I should have expected this sort of appearance sooner or later. But what on earth does he want now?”

“He better not try to put you on a plane again.”

She turned to see Daniel sitting on the edge of the bed, attention firmly fixed on fitting his sock over his leg. “Well, he would have to shoot me first.”

Daniel shook his head without looking up. “Not funny, Peg.” But she saw his cheek twitch.

In the kitchen, they found Jack lounging at the dining table with the empty muffin basket, his feet propped up on the seat of a chair. When Peggy walked in, he tossed the newspaper aside like he had rehearsed it. Honestly, he probably had.

“Rise and shine, Cart—” His gaze landed behind her, and his face split into a shit-eating grin. “…Chief.”

Peggy cleared her throat. “Good morning, Chief Thompson. I hope you weren’t waiting long—we’ve been up to our ears in files.”

Jack’s grin didn’t change. “Ye-ah…” He let the word drag out.

“Is there a particular reason for this special visit?”

“Matter of fact, there is.” He glanced into the kitchen. “Hey, Jarvis, could you give us a minute?”

Mr. Jarvis looked to Peggy for confirmation before he untied his apron with the barest huff, muttering something about finishing the pie before the turkey went in the oven.

Jack watched him walk all the way out of the room before he turned back to Peggy and Daniel. “Does nobody else find it funny that three of the people in this house aren’t even American?”

Daniel leaned forward, gripping the back of one of the chairs. “What’s this about, Jack?” His entire posture added, _get to the point._

“Got something to help you with the whole Council Removal Project.”

Peggy felt Daniel’s eyes on her and shook her head slightly. Neither of them had informed Jack of that part of the investigation. They had agreed on that.

Jack looked between them. “I mean, that is the plan, right?” His tone was flat. “Find out who shot me, take down the Council, ride off into the sunset…”

“I told you before I left New York,” Peggy said carefully, “the Council had no motive against you.”

“So, what, you let them off the hook?” Jack tilted his head to the side with a humoring smile. “Peggy.”

“You think we’re running our own investigation.” Daniel’s expression was inscrutable.

Jack brought his feet down, sitting up and directing his attention squarely at Daniel. “I _know_ you’re running your own investigation—”

“And how—”

He didn’t spare Peggy a glance. “Because I know _you_ ”—he pointed at Daniel—“and I know _her_ , and I can only imagine the fist of righteousness you want to bring down together.” He sat back again, satisfaction creeping over his features. “And I’m here to help.”

Peggy narrowed her eyes in consideration. She knew when Jack was blowing smoke. When he was laughing at their expense, and when he was turning his own wheels behind the scenes. And she knew when he meant it. “What is it you have to offer?”

“I know where the Council is meeting.”

Peggy’s mouth fell open. “Where?” she asked at the same time that Daniel demanded, “How do you know?”

Jack laced his fingers behind his head, his smile returning full force. “Now they’re interested.”

“Where,” Peggy repeated, with a quiet touch to Daniel’s back where Jack couldn’t see. _Just a little more patience_.

“Home of Andrew Yates. Stock broker in the Arena Club who—”

“We know who he is,” Daniel interrupted.

Jack waved a hand in acknowledgement. “All right, then. Saturday night.”

Peggy curled her fingers in Daniel’s shirt. “Howard has an invitation to that party.”

Jack nodded. “Real big to-do. They’ll all be there.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because they’re inducting the new members of the Council.” His smile had a hard edge. “And they’re saving a seat for my old man.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, kudos-ing, commenting! I love to hear your thoughts.
> 
> In the words of l0g0phile (the most brilliant of philes):  
> NEXT UP: THE DREAM TEAM! PEG JACK AND DAN  
> With special guest appearance HOWARD THE SPY
> 
> for status updates and other whims, find me on [tumblr](https://ink-dust.tumblr.com/).


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Thanks is Given, missions are undertaken, feelings are felt, and they learn just how much they don't know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've grown such a gap between updates, and I'm truly sorry about that. For a while this was pretty much the only thing I was working on, but novel revisions and other writings have intruded in the past few months, which is frustrating. But this chapter is a big one.
> 
> Because writing stories that necessitate seating charts has somehow become a thing for me, here is the Thanksgiving table (since I made it, you should have it):
> 
>             Ana   Jack   Rose  
> Howard                         Peggy  
>               Jarvis    Daniel

“Let me get this straight.” Stark made his way to the liquor cabinet in the corner of his office, leading Daniel to wonder how many Stark liquor cabinets he would find on a scavenger hunt. “The two of us”—Stark waved a bottle at Jack—“go to this party. With the Council.”

Daniel tilted his hand from side to side, evaluating. “Council…adjacent.”

Peggy stepped in. “At some point in the evening, the Council will hold a private meeting. Jack will plant a bug on his father before they separate from the party. You will be another set of eyes among the guests.”

Stark offered a second whiskey to Peggy. “And ears. Don’t forget the ears.”

“Yes, we were hoping for two-way communications. What can you have for Saturday?”

“And no glasses this time.” Jack made a face. “Jarvis looked like a cockatoo.”

Stark scowled. “I can do shirt collars.”

“We need something unobtrusive for Jack’s father as well,” Peggy said. “We can only hope any counter-devices in the meeting room don’t outmatch ours.”

Stark stepped around the scattered papers to the clear spot in the middle of the rug where Peggy knelt intently. He peered at the address jotted down beside Jack’s partial guest list. “You don’t have a lot on this, do you?”

“It’s a private residence,” Daniel said. “Not a lot of information we can get, and not in two days.”

Stark glanced at the clock. “You can’t break into county records before then? C’mon, Peg.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not if you want a well-formed plan. We’re working with what we’ve got.”

“So Peggy and I will be in the van—”

“’Cause if anyone spots her within a mile of that party, this is all over. For everyone,” Jack added.

They were all in this now. And if the Council’s suspicions rose again, it wouldn’t end with probationary surveillance. Peggy would be out, blacklisted from the agencies, at best, and Daniel didn’t want to consider the worst. He would lose the West Coast office, could face disciplinary action, no matter who might argue that he wasn’t her direct superior. And Jack… Jack would be with them or against them, and Daniel had a feeling that Jack himself, most of all, didn’t want to know what he would choose.

Jarvis knocked on the door twice before opening it with the restrained glee of someone in on a secret. “Pardon me—Miss Roberts has arrived.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jarvis.” Peggy started gathering the papers off the floor. “We’ll be there in a moment.”

“Are we sure about him?” Jack asked after the door closed.

Stark frowned. “Jarvis saved your ass, Thompson. Our collective ass.”

“Yeah. I was there.”

Stark slurped his whiskey. “And _how_ many times did I tell you to call if you were coming into town? Tomorrow’s game is full.”

“We’re sure of Mr. Jarvis, Jack.” Peggy slid their notes into the top drawer of Stark’s desk. “If the rest of you will meet Rose, I’m going to change for dinner.”

Daniel caught Jack smirking at him as they headed for the dining room. “What?”

Jack quirked an eyebrow down the hall where Peggy had disappeared. “Was that not a hint?”

“Shut up, Jack.”

Thanksgiving at Stark’s. There was wine that cost as much as Daniel’s car and food to feed twice as many people. But Daniel couldn’t help remembering the year before, when he couldn’t get time off and couldn’t ask part of his family to spend the holiday away from home. He wouldn’t exactly have chosen to share Thanksgiving dinner with Jack Thompson, but…

Daniel watched Peggy tilt her chin up in laughter as Ana told a story about her new art class.

Rose caught his eye across the table, and for once her grin wasn’t laughing at him. “This is nice, Daniel.”

“It is.” He didn’t miss Peggy sneaking a cheese wafer off his plate, but he decided just to monitor the situation. “Did you get a call through to your mother?”

“Just before dinner. And your father?”

He nodded. _Didn’t have a lot of time_ , he almost said, before he remembered that they weren’t supposed to have spent the day planning a surveillance mission. “All’s well back home. They had a lot more questions about where I was spending my holiday.”

“Or _with_ _who_?” Rose darted a pointed look at Peggy.

Who wasn’t as deep in the other conversation as Daniel would have hoped. “Am I being discussed?”

He put a protective hand over his remaining cheese wafer. “Someone’s nosy.”

“You are speaking directly in front of me.”

“You may have been…asked about. By one or two people.”

Peggy raised an eyebrow.

“Three or four people.”

Now Rose’s grin was laughing at him.

_Don’t try to fool me,_ his father had said when Daniel apologized for not coming home. _You belong there._

“All right—before the main course.” Stark stood up at the head of the table and raised his glass. “We’ll keep it short and sweet. To family, friends, and…other special guests.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack groused from the extra chair.

Ana giggled. “We are very happy to have you here.”

“Hey.” Stark’s mustache pulled down at the tips. “Is this my toast or not?”

“No, it isn’t.” At the other end of the table, Peggy lifted her glass higher. “To…”

“To surprises,” Ana suggested, with a look at Jack. “And traditions.”

“To beginnings,” Rose declared.

Daniel smiled when Peggy’s eyes met his. “To dancing.”

Jack scoffed softly. “To all of you crazy people.”

“Join the club, Thompson,” Stark replied. “We all have to be a little crazy for this plan.”

Rose waved her glass. “Can we drink now? And then you can fill me in on whatever mess you’re about to get yourselves into.”

Daniel exchanged a look with Peggy and Jack.

Stark glanced from the three of them to Rose and back. “Oh, was she not…?”

Rose waited behind her Cheshire Cat expression.

Peggy pressed her lips together, poorly hiding a smile. “We _will_ need her.”

Daniel couldn’t argue with that if he wanted to.

“Council of Nine, huh?” Jack scanned the seats at the table. “Well, we’ve got seven.”

\---

From the far edge of the property, even a mansion the size of Yates’ looked small, at least what they could see of it through the trees. Daniel had a feeling that almost any other spot would have given them a better vantage point, but they were lucky to find any side road within range of the radio. This whole thing was already risky enough.

“This is familiar,” Peggy noted as they set up communications. “Though I don’t intend to bleed through this blouse.”

Daniel smiled ruefully. “Sorry you’re stuck in here again.”

“Well, if I must be stuck somewhere…” She threw him a sideways glance that no one could deliver like Peggy. “And better here than at home.”

He wondered for a moment whether home meant Stark’s, or whether she thought further back than that. Whether it was a place at all, or just another word for being left behind.

“So, best case scenario,” he said, “what do we get out of this?”

“The identities of all nine Council members. The location of their new headquarters.” Peggy toyed with a switch on the radio, considering. “Something about whatever they have planned next. At this point, _anything_ they have planned. Knowing their names will only take us so far if we’ve nothing else to work with.”

No one had asked that question yet, but it was coming sooner or later. _Take down the Council_ , Jack had said. They were all agreed on that. But no one had asked how, and Daniel knew no one had an answer.

The crackle of static rose and then settled as Peggy adjusted the radio. “Jack, do you read me?”

“Loud and clear. ’Bout to head in.”

She turned the second dial. “Howard?”

“Remind me to ask Jarvis what he did to this jacket. It doesn’t sit right.”

“Yes, we will worry about that later. Are you both inside?”

Stark made an unimpressed sound. “This guy needs a better decorator.”

“I’ve got eyes on Senior,” Jack replied. “Give me a minute.”

The faint noise of the party filtered over the connection, distant music and the mass hum of voices.

“How many people are in there, Stark?”

They listened to him order a drink before he answered. “Couple hundred? I don’t know, it’s a big house. And very poorly planned—who puts a bar right here?”

“Junior!” A deep voice cut in, close to the other microphone, and if Stark was still talking, Daniel wasn’t paying attention. “Your mother thought you wouldn’t make it.”

“’Course I made it, Pop. You think I’d miss this?”

Daniel felt a sudden urge to switch off the radio. He could hear the effort in Jack’s smile, all that false ease and bravado, and it was nothing Daniel hadn’t seen himself, but with it came the realization that he recognized it. Daniel could tell when it was forced—when it was _that_ forced.

Jack’s father gave a laugh. “Oh, I told her you’d be here. A party like this? You couldn’t keep Jackie away.”

“Couldn’t _drag_ me away.”

Jack’s father said something in reply, oblivious and careless, and Daniel didn’t know which felt worse to hear. He looked down, away from the radio, like that would silence it.

_He was a friend of my father,_ Jack had said, standing in Daniel’s kitchen. _Vernon. And he was a rat._ He looked up at Daniel. _Just makes you start to wonder._

“Daniel,” Peggy whispered.

He lifted his head. She had her hand covering her microphone. Her eyes were intent on him, flooded with concern, though Daniel was sure he hadn’t made a sound. But she knew him.

He switched off their microphones and turned to face her. “I love you.”

Peggy’s lips parted in surprise for the barest instant before her smile broke like the sunrise. “ _Here_ , Daniel?”

“What can I say—I keep to tradition.”

She pressed a lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I love you dearly,” she murmured against his cheek. “And I very much look forward to telling you so outside of this van.”

“Done,” Jack said from the speaker. “They’re going in soon.”

Daniel flipped the microphones back on. “Good.”

Peggy gave his hand one more squeeze. “Now we hope the bug still works in that room.” She twisted the third dial until the buzz of the party came in clearly.

“It’ll work,” Stark said. “…Hopefully.”

“Do either of you see anything else worrisome?”

“Nothing so far,” Jack responded. “I’ll do another lap.”

“Just a hell of a lot of old men who all think we’re friends now. Oh—” Stark’s sarcasm reluctantly retreated as someone approached him, and the four of them were subjected to a detailed discussion of the hors d’oeuvres.

“Not that this isn’t fascinating,” Jack muttered, “but they’re heading upstairs.”

Daniel dialed down the volume on Stark’s microphone and turned up the receiver for the bug on Thompson—under his jacket collar, or wherever Jack had managed to plant it.

“We’ll let you know if you need to get out,” Peggy told the others. “You speak up if you notice something in the main room.”

“Otherwise we’ll rendezvous at Stark’s after midnight.” Daniel listened to the noise of the party fade as Thompson moved away, likely into a hallway. Doors opened and then closed, and Daniel held his breath that the signal wouldn’t go out.

“Gentlemen.”

The sound quality had dipped, but it was still coming through. “Yates?” Daniel whispered to Peggy.

She nodded. “It is his house, I suppose.”

Yates cleared his throat. “It’s an honor to have you all—” A flare of static interrupted.

Peggy twisted a dial. “They must have some countermeasures. We’re getting through, but it’s weak.”

“—to Mr. Jones,” Yates said as the line cleared.

“Thank you, Andrew.” A chair scrubbed on the floor as Hugh Jones rose. “Boy am I looking at some impressive faces. Mr. Thompson…Mr. Addison…” The signal flickered again.

“Addison,” Daniel repeated.

“Not Willard Addison.” Alarm was clear on Peggy’s face. “Senator Addison?”

Daniel could only give her a helpless look. “We knew it ran deep.”

“—generous host. I believe we’re only missing one…”

“I hope you may excuse my tardiness,” a new voice chimed in.

Daniel leaned closer to the speaker. Didn’t he know that voice?

“John, I was just saying hello to your son. Glad to see he’s doing well.”

Peggy’s hand closed around his wrist right as it registered.

“Jack—” Daniel pulled his microphone to the side to let Peggy keep listening to the meeting. “Did you see Matthias Corse?”

“Yeah, he just stopped me to talk.”

“Well, he’s in the room.”

Jack cursed harshly under his breath. “I knew it. I knew that bastard was—”

“Jack,” Peggy cut him off. “We need you with us. You can’t draw attention to yourself.”

“I’m _not_.” But he went silent. Daniel had no idea what Stark was doing, but they couldn’t spare the time to find out.

“Director Corse. Good to have you with us.” Something in Hugh Jones’ tone made Daniel and Peggy exchange a glance. A tension lay under the words that didn’t fit with the rest of the scene.

“Do you think they disagree?” Daniel murmured. “They could be split on bringing in Corse.”

Peggy shook her head. “Not for a Council seat. They would be fools to accept anything less than a unanimous vote. The risk of splintering is too high.”

“Personal, then. Do we know anything about—” Daniel stopped when Corse spoke again.

“I’m glad we’ve come to an agreement. I know—” The signal wavered, garbling the next words. “But I assure you I’m very happy to be here.”

“Of course he’s happy,” someone said in an undertone, close to the transmitter on Thompson. “He’s not the one getting a babysitter.”

Thompson huffed softly, not quite a laugh. “I’m sure they have their reasons.”

_What?_ Peggy mouthed at Daniel, her brow furrowed.

He shook his head in confusion, reaching for his pen to write down the exact words. _They._ Up until now, “they” had always meant the Council.

“‘Babysitter’,” Peggy whispered. “If someone else is pulling their strings…”

Daniel rubbed his forehead. “How many strings are we going to keep finding?”

Jones had moved on to the formalities for Council inductions. There were candles, apparently, which would have given Daniel a laugh or at least let him roll his eyes, if only the rest of this made any sense.

“Hey.” Stark’s voice suddenly cut through, sharp with surprise. “It’s Ida.”

Peggy jolted. “ _What_.” She cranked up Stark’s volume dial.

“Ida—”

“That’s Dottie.” She was out of her seat before Daniel could even move. “She’s here? You’re sure?”

“Yeah, looks like she’s heading out. Wasn’t she the one who—”

Peggy threw open the door of the van.

“Peggy.” Daniel grabbed his crutch. “You can’t go out there.”

“Daniel, it is Dottie Underwood, and I will be damned if I—” She jumped out of the van, leaving Daniel to scramble after her.

“Peggy, you can’t be _seen_!”

“I won’t be.”

“Peggy!”

She was gone. Daniel hauled himself outside and up the hill onto the property, his heart pounding.

The vast lawn spread out in front of him, a shadow landscape under the haze of the moon and the yellow glare of the lights from the house. There, in the distance, he could see Peggy’s white blouse running ahead of him, not toward the main house but in the direction of the far tree line, or maybe the carriage house. And then Daniel saw it—a small dark shape sprinting from the mansion, its path set to cross dead on with Peggy’s.

They collided and went down.

Daniel dug his teeth into his lip to keep from shouting her name.

_Don’t have a gun_ , he prayed. _Please don’t have a gun._

He couldn’t see a thing on the ground, not even Peggy’s white blouse. He ran, without any hope of reaching them, and then abruptly the dark figure rematerialized from the grass and bolted for the tree line.

Daniel ran faster, stumbling once, twice, gasping and gritting his teeth, and finally he caught a flash of white. “Peggy!”

He was still a hundred feet away when she rose unsteadily. “Daniel, stop.” Another white blur in the dark as she held up her hands in front of her. “I’m all right. Don’t.”

“Like hell,” he muttered. She was limping, one hand held to her face as they closed the distance between them. “I’ll stop,” he panted, “when you do.”

“Daniel.” She laid soothing hands on his shoulders, but the gesture only uncovered the stark stain of blood at her lip.

“Jesus, Peggy.” When she winced at the brush of his thumb, he knew a bruise would be forming under her eye. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

For once, Peggy didn't argue. She slipped her left arm under his right, and they hobbled back one step at a time.

\---

“I had to try, Daniel.”

He dabbed at the cut on her chin, studiously ignoring the four other people encroaching on their space. “I know.”

Daniel wasn’t angry with her for that, because if he picked that hill to die on with Peggy Carter, he would already be lying somewhere in the dust behind them. But it scared him, and it would never stop scaring him. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, his whole body felt shaky, threatening his reputation for steady hands, and his leg was already screaming at him. It wouldn’t be pretty to unwrap later. Peggy’s eyebrows would pinch together, and they might end up fighting then, but for now she was letting him tend to her hurts, and that was no small thing.

“Do we know why Underwood was there?” Jack asked from where he had stationed himself in the doorway, leaning against the frame. For all his smirking the other morning, at least _he_ seemed uncomfortable in Peggy’s bedroom.

Stark had no such compunctions, sprawling in the chair below his portrait like he was the one who needed the bowl of ice Ana had brought in. He waved a lazy hand. “She wanted a party?”

“Not really her thing.” Daniel knew better than to believe a word out of Dottie Underwood’s mouth, but her commentary on Chadwick’s fancy gala had sounded at least halfway truthful.

“I know why.” Peggy sat up straighter, pressing a hand to her side. “The same reason we caught her the first time. She still wants that Arena Club pin. Key. And now she’s got one.”

“You saw it?”

“It slipped out of her glove on the lawn. She snatched it up before I could grab it.”

“Okay,” Jack huffed in frustration, “what the hell do these pin-keys open?”

“If neither you nor Howard knows, I’m not sure how the rest of us will find out.” Peggy tried to stand up from the foot of the bed, but Daniel pressed her back down.

“Peggy.”

She gave in with a sigh. “Mr. Jarvis, under Howard’s chair…” She pointed.

Jarvis looked relieved to be assigned a task. He hadn’t stopped hovering since they got in the door.

“Inside the left panel of the skirt,” Peggy added.

Stark made a disgruntled noise when Jarvis pushed his legs out of the way. After a moment of fumbling near the floor, Jarvis said, “Oh! Quite clever, Miss Carter.”

Ana gave Peggy a curious look.

“I slit open the seam at the end. Have you got it, Mr. Jarvis?”

He straightened up with the silver pin held between two fingers. “This?”

“That, yes.” When he handed it to her, Peggy twisted it to extend the pair of teeth, and her breath came out in a rush. “As I thought.”

“What is it?”

“The one she had was different.” She thumbed the metal peg closest to the end, visibly shorter than the other. “This was the longer one.”

Daniel stared down at the pin as the implication sank in. “There’s more than one key.”

“There is more than one key.”

Jack let his head clunk against the doorframe. “And we still don’t have a clue.”

\---

There was no question of Daniel going home tonight. After they finally got everyone out of the room, he undid his leg and found about what he expected. Red and angry and chafed in places, though luckily he didn’t see real blisters. His left leg wouldn’t forgive him soon, either, the muscles weak and stiff all the way down to his toes.

Peggy caught sight of his raw skin when she came out of the bathroom and hissed between her teeth. “Daniel.”

He lifted his head. “Do you want to fight about it?” he asked quietly. He held her gaze with a sense of calm. They had done this before. They could handle another round. “Because I will, if you want to.”

As he watched, the tension seeped out of her, and she slumped onto the bed on his bad side. “No. We’ll both be aching in the morning as it is.” She turned to press her forehead to his shoulder, avoiding her battered cheek. “And I would have run after you just the same.”

They were learning, slowly. Personal feelings were a fact of the mission now, inescapable, and neither of them could pretend not to understand. They sat in the quiet for a few minutes, Peggy’s head leaning on his shoulder while he went through his routine.

“This was a success, you know,” he said when he’d finished. “The bug didn’t short out. No one discovered it, or the van. And now we know all nine members of the Council.”

“Corse,” Peggy murmured with a tired sigh. “I knew eventually we would see him again. The trouble is I don’t think we even know who he is.”

“So we find out.” Daniel ran his fingers gently through her hair. “Most of the time we need to know what we’re looking for before we can find it. Now we know where to start looking.”

“Corse. The keys. If we can learn where those keys lead, we might find Dottie.” Her voice was dropping off, split lip and bruised ribs catching up with her.

Daniel took it as a sign for both of them. “Bedtime, Peg.” He eased her to her feet and untied her robe.

She started to climb into bed and stopped halfway under the covers. “Oh, I’ve not forgot.” Peggy reached for his hand. “I love you. Outside of the van.”

Daniel smiled. “I love you too. Inside the van or out.”

“Well, I do love you inside the van as well.”

Laughing, he nudged her over to make room for him, and they went through their usual negotiation of pillows and limbs. Gingerly, tonight.

Peggy curled her arm around him, tucking herself snug against his side. “There’s one more thing we’ve got now.” Her whisper slipped through the dark between them but no farther. “We have a team.”

Daniel thought of the seven chairs around the table, the scene he could never have imagined a year ago. “Yeah.” He pressed his lips to Peggy’s hair. “We do.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if this were a novel, this would be the halfway point. Cue my frazzled face. I don't think this one is quite full-blown novel, so we'll just have to see how things play out from here.
> 
> Thank you for reading, for kudos, and for even the briefest of comments. I keep them sewn into the bottom of my curtains where no one can steal them.
> 
> l0g0phile is ever-patient and her beta commentary is gold.  
> "jack’s eyebrows vs stark’s mustache"  
> "GOOD THINGS HAPPEN IN VANS"  
> "and they shall be called… the fellowship of the keys"


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our dear friends see the year change.
> 
> Also, shit goes down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's here! At long last! Never forgotten! #twoyearsofagentcarter
> 
> This is the longest chapter yet.

Things, for lack of a better word, carried on. Peggy’s bruises healed—at least the outward ones.She entered the latest round of the hunt for Dottie Underwood more determined than ever, working indiscriminately at the office, at Howard’s, at Daniel’s, and commandeering nearly all of Rose’s hours upstairs. In spite of the look on Daniel’s face, she knew he wouldn’t object.

“You find her, you come to me first,” was all he said.

Peggy was too busy to consider how sneakily _I can take care of myself_ had turned into _of course I will._

Dead end, cold lead, false information. Silly of her to think that their run-in outside the city would stir up something closer to home. She took to turning the Arena Club key over in her hands, as if it might enlighten her. Months later, Dottie still wanted it. Well, and now she’d got it.

Peggy’s train of thought halted when the telephone rang, and a moment later Mr. Jarvis called to her. “Chief Thompson is on the line.”

She frowned. In the weeks since Thanksgiving, they hadn’t heard from Jack beyond an official capacity. For him to phone Howard’s, he must have found something. It was a dangerous call to make over an SSR line.

“Jack—”

“Don’t worry, I’m at Stark’s penthouse.”

She couldn’t say she had expected that. “Did Angie let you in?”

“She’s not here. Stark got me in.”

Peggy didn’t bother to ask how that had come about. “What’s happened? It’s one in the morning over there.”

“Corse is coming to see me tomorrow. Today, I guess. Before you ask, I don’t know why. But whatever bug you’ve got in my office, you might want to tune in.”

She opened her mouth to protest that fact, but there was little point. “I will inform Daniel,” she said instead.

“He says you’re still looking for Underwood. How’s that going?”

“Are you asking as my supervisor or as a needling prick?”

Jack’s grin was audible. “Little bit of both.”

A noise in the background interrupted Peggy’s reply. She heard the receiver clunk onto a table.

“Miss Martinelli—”

 _“Stop there.”_ A pause. _“Oh.”_

Jack’s weak chuckle filtered over the line. “You greet all your guests with a .38?”

_“Only the uninvited ones.”_

Peggy bit back a smile.

“Ah, that was…my mistake. Had to talk to Carter, here.” Jack’s voice grew closer again. “And you know, for being a phone company? We’re not real great for that.”

_“Well, if you gotta.”_

Angie understood more than Jack realized, after the weeks Peggy had spent traveling back and forth to the mansion to make a simple phone call. At least by this time Howard had established a more secure line in the penthouse.

“You got that, Carter?” Jack asked, the receiver back at his ear. “Corse. Ten a.m. Eastern.”

“Got it.” She couldn’t help adding, “Watch yourself, Jack.”

His soft snort was more reassuring than she would give it credit for. Beneath the bravado, he would take this seriously. And he had done well before with Corse. The question was what Corse wanted from him now.

Daniel voiced as much when Peggy closed his office door near seven o’clock. No one else was in the office yet, but even so, none of the agents would question her desire to keep conferences about Dottie relatively private. She also suspected that she and Daniel weren’t always as discreet as they hoped, but his agents still deferred to her, and no one seemed inclined to leap to the word _fraternization_. Rose had made a comment along the lines of, “When the Chief’s happy…” and Peggy had rolled her eyes.

Privately, however, she agreed. It was good to see Daniel happy, even interrupted by moments such as these, sitting silently on opposite sides of his desk, listening to the expectant hum of static.

They both jumped when Jack’s voice came over the radio, barely above a whisper. “Good morning, Marge.”

Peggy exhaled. “You sound far too awake.”

Daniel gave her a cautious look. “You do know…he can’t hear you.”

“I did plant the bloody thing.”

“Don’t worry,” Jack’s voice interrupted, “I wouldn’t forget you, Chief. How’s the weather over there?”

“This is ridiculous,” Daniel muttered.

And entirely forgotten when Corse arrived, offering pleasantries and that careful smile Peggy could still see in her mind.

“I wish you’d met him,” she murmured to Daniel. “I should like your opinion.”

“On how much we should hate the guy?”

“On whether he’s as dangerous as he feels.”

A scraping of chairs made them both look at the speaker.

“I had business in New York and decided that should include you, Chief Thompson.”

“That so?” Jack’s voice stretched a grin across his face. “Always happy for you to stop by, Director.”

“It’s good to see you doing so well. I would have hated to see this office in anyone else’s hands.”

Peggy felt her hackles rising. That was the trick of him—flattery that would fool the sharpest polygraph. Weaving that web, silk so fine they couldn’t even see it.

“But enough formality,” Corse continued, pulling her from that thought. “I’d like to be honest with you.”

“By all means, Director.”

“It’s no secret that Vernon Masters and I didn’t quite see eye-to-eye. As such, I’ve never gotten to know your father as well as I’d like. It seems a great shame to me. But you, Jack, I think we could understand one another.”

Jack paused, and Peggy’s stomach tensed. “If he’s willing to act as an informant,” she whispered. “If he can play their game a little further…”

“Vernon and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye, either.”

Peggy let her breath out. Yes. That was the bait.

Corse hummed thoughtfully. “There are reasons he was never appointed to the Council. Then again, the Council itself suffers from a certain…narrow focus.”

Jack gave a laugh. “From what I hear, they’ve got a hand in just about everything.”

Corse laughed as well, softer, like it was a private joke. “By some accounts. They would have us believe nothing lies beyond their control, but there are forces moving in arenas they haven’t even laid eyes on. That’s where I come in.”

Peggy looked at Daniel, as if to ask silently whether he was hearing the same words. A confession uttered like it wasn’t a confession at all. They had questioned Corse’s seat on the Council, suspected that he held more power than others. Someone at the table had mentioned a babysitter. But they hadn’t heard more than that, because that was when Howard had seen Dottie.

“What sort of arenas are we talking about here?”

She breathed a sigh of relief when Jack’s easy tone matched Corse’s.

“Ones that reach beyond national borders. You’re aware that the SSR office in Washington is involved with an Operation Paperclip?”

Jack must have nodded.

“Certain organizations see a broader picture. The forest and the trees, is that the saying? The Council’s plans have a tendency to ignore the global scale, sometimes even to threaten more significant interests.”

“And you represent those interests.” It wasn’t a question.

“I am a liaison of sorts. The Council is under no delusions about the power of an international network. They would much prefer to work together.”

Silence fell, broken only by an occasional soft pop of static.

“And why are you telling me this now?” Jack asked finally, voicing Peggy’s own thoughts.

Corse cleared his throat, and she imagined his hands folded on the edge of Jack’s desk. “Circumstances evolve. The world behind the Iron Curtain is shifting, and those who lose sight of those moving pieces will lose far more than that. And I think I can speak for us both when I say no one wants to lose.”

Jack laughed under his breath, barely audible. “No, never been that fond of losing.”

After he left to walk Corse back through the bullpen, Peggy and Daniel looked at each other, neither finding the words.

“Well,” Peggy managed, “now we know why the Council seemed divided on Corse’s position.”

“The thing you don’t want but you know you need.”

“And were likely forced to accept, regardless.”

Daniel heaved a sigh. “We knew the Council couldn’t be the biggest thing out there.” He rubbed his temple. “At least, I think we did. It’s been hard to see anything else.”

“It remains our best chance to learn anything more.” Peggy’s hand closed around the Arena Club pin in her pocket. “Corse is part of that. Whatever else is crawling in the shadows, it was the Council’s key that Dottie Underwood risked herself to acquire. Or keys, rather.”

Because there were two. At minimum, two.

Footsteps returned over the radio, and the office door closed. “Did you hear that?” Jack whispered.

Daniel gave her a look that made her stifle a laugh, in spite of everything.

“Hope you did.” Jack’s chair creaked. “I liked the part where he talked a lot without really saying anything.”

“He did, though,” Peggy murmured. Operation Paperclip. Germany, Russia. _Those moving pieces._ “I’m just not sure we know what it was.”

\---

Christmas snuck up on them long before she expected it. But Peggy couldn’t name the last time a Christmas had honestly felt like Christmas in her mind. She tried to count back. Even before the war—Michael had first left home when she was fifteen. Perhaps that was the last year that home had truly felt right.

By consequence, however, it seemed no great task to accept a Christmas with an inordinate amount of sunshine and a flamingo in the garden. Rose had been humming carols since the first of December, and Howard’s sideboard featured a rotating selection of biscuits and cakes that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

A lot of good it did him.

Peggy watched from the opposite side of the lab table as Howard poked at something inside the latest bug, a magnifying lens fixed to his face. “You’re sure?” she asked. “You’ve had notes for us every week before this.”

He gestured dismissively with a tiny screwdriver. “Scotch, hedge funds, pin the tail on the donkey. It’s all the same.”

“Nothing about Corse?”

“Should there be?” Howard muttered something under his breath and fumbled among his tools without taking his eyes off the device.

“Howard…”

“They’re a bunch of assholes, Peg. Just a bunch of rich assholes. _Shit_ ,” he snapped when the bug emitted a weak spark. He tore the magnifying lens away from his face. “Jarvis!”

“Mr. Jarvis has stepped out. We crossed paths in the hall.”

“ _Damn_ it!” Howard chucked the screwdriver across the room. It pinged off a half-empty bottle of gin and rolled beneath the cupboard.

“Howard,” she tried again, soft but firm. “We already know they aren’t using the Arena Club for anything more significant than a Christmas party.”

“And wherever they’re meeting now will have counter-surveillance at least as strong as that back room. This has to work.” He blinked at the metal pieces laid out in front of him, suddenly looking painfully lost. “It has to.”

Peggy opened her mouth to say something, likely something ungainly and ill fit, but Howard shoved his stool back from the table and headed for the makeshift liquor cart.

“Got a great idea for tomorrow,” he said abruptly, like he had never paused. “Go measure the dining room table for me, will you?”

And whatever she might have said was lost. “I will not.” Howard shot her a wounded look, but it was too intentionally crafted to fool her. “Daniel’s father is coming to dinner. Bringing him here at all is risk enough.”

“You’re no fun.”

“I don’t aim to be. Goodbye, Howard.”

He caught up to her upstairs. “Just hear me out.”

Daniel was fortunate enough to miss the explanation that followed, but Peggy still felt the need to apologize the moment he walked in, just for the scene he was witnessing. But Howard was still waving a length of copper pipe in the air.

“No, Howard,” she repeated.

“Peg, it’s just—”

“No, Howard.”

“‘Explosion’ was the wrong word. It doesn’t explode. It just…pops a little.”

“Yes, and then someone loses an eye.”

His mustache drooped into a scowl. “Fine. Use something boring. Holly twigs, or whatever people like to stare at while they eat.”

“I’ve set out several nice pairs of candlesticks,” Mr. Jarvis said from the doorway.

“No one wants me to be happy.”

“On the contrary, sir. Your mood is not the only thing which suffers.”

Howard narrowed his eyes. “Christmas has made you cheeky, Jarvis.”

“I believe that was the brandy.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jarvis,” Peggy cut in, taking Daniel’s arm to shepherd him away.

“You okay?” he asked after they’d rounded the corner.

She exhaled. It was a double-edged sword, having someone who could read her again. “I’m worried about him.”

“Stark?”

To Daniel’s credit, she didn’t detect a scoff. But perhaps that meant he had noticed, too.

“He tried again, yesterday, at the Arena Club. The bug shorted out just like the one last week. And the one before that.” Peggy stopped when they reached her room. “I would say he just doesn’t like to be told no, but this feels different.” She pressed a hand to her face, picturing the collection of bottles clustered on the lab table. “It reminds me of…”

But she didn’t finish that thought, because there were some things she would rather not think of at all, and the trips Howard still secretly made across the Atlantic covered a great deal of them. Not as much a secret as he thought they were. It made her wonder whether it hurt more that he was still searching for Steve or that he felt he shouldn’t tell her.

She startled at Daniel’s hand on her arm. “Peg?”

“What about you?” she asked, pulling herself upright. “Is your father on his way?”

He gave her a shrewd look but let the deflection slide. “Plane is in the air.”

“Already?” Peggy twisted to see the clock. “…Oh.”

She tried to recall where the hours had gone since she’d left the office. Jack had sent some files on Operation Paperclip, and Peggy had snagged a few more to read over Christmas. Had begun reading them, because she hadn’t seen anything else to do. And then Howard. She closed her eyes. People, more than any other thing, were the most likely to make her feel helpless.

“Hey.” Daniel’s fingers slipped around her wrist. “Come here.”

“Where?” she asked inanely as he led her across the hall. In the sitting room, he let go of her to set up the gramophone. “Daniel,” she started.

“You told me.” The music rose, easy and slow. Daniel leaned his crutch against the fireplace mantel and offered his left hand. “I should tell you when we needed to dance.”

“Did I,” she replied, but it was barely a breath. He pulled her in, closer than before, his body warm against hers from knee to chest. She tucked her head into his shoulder. “Now and then I have a smart idea.”

“Now and then.”

She laughed, muffled in his shirt. “Oh, you arse.”

\---

And then Christmas was gone, as soon as it began. Peggy reminded herself that she should expect it—the way time dragged on through an hour and then swallowed entire days, because more and more it seemed inclined to the latter.

She held onto moments instead. Daniel’s father—the strength of his handshake, the warmth in his laugh the first time she slipped and made an indelicate remark. The way the weight eased off Howard’s shoulders, even just for an evening. The first package ever to arrive bearing both Daniel’s name and hers. They opened it to find a cake from a local bakery, a card attached.

_No snowmen this time, Chief, but you just give me the date and I’ll have them do one up right._

_Merry Christmas, Carter._

Daniel maintained stubborn radio silence on the subject of the first cake Jack had given him, but with this one, Peggy had to put the pieces together.

Subtlety was not Jack Thompson’s strong point.

They hadn’t talked about it yet. Daniel hadn’t mentioned it, and Peggy hadn’t brought it up, because frankly she wasn’t sure what she would say. Four months still felt so soon—except for when it didn’t, when it felt like things were finally as they should be. But why change things, then? She felt content as they were.

But she should have learned by now that her feelings were as sneaky as they were intractable. When they found a private moment to exchange gifts, her heart stuttered in abrupt disappointment—and a contradictory flash of nervous relief—that the box he gave her was too large for a ring.

“You used to wear a really nice one,” he said when she unwrapped it. “Then I noticed you didn’t anymore.” He scratched the back of his neck. “It’s okay if you don’t—”

“It’s beautiful, Daniel.” A swell of affection rose in her as she held the wristwatch up to the light. It had such pretty details, but subtle ones, making it suitable for anything. “The one I lost belonged to my grandmother—remind me to tell you sometime, it’s a funny story. Oh—” She stopped, peering at the clear face. “Is that a chronograph? I’ve never seen one on a ladies’ watch.”

“I…may have let Stark at it. Figured it’d be more useful with an alarm and everything. He said it works underwater.”

“Daniel Sousa, you…” She searched for something less doltish than _you wonderful man_ and in the end simply thrust his own gift into his hands.

“What’s this?”

“Actually, I’m not sure it counts as a gift, but I felt it was the least I could do.”

Daniel opened the box and stared down at the lone pen. For a long moment he just stared at it. A peculiar expression crept over his face, one that seemed to involve a number of twitches around his lips and a great degree of blushing.

“I’m afraid it’s several years late.”

He lifted his head, and the look in his eyes was her only warning before he was there kissing the breath out of her.

Perhaps that was the moment she wanted to remember most.

But Christmas ended, and 1947 was soon to follow. Peggy would have been content to spend the last night of the year tucked away in Daniel’s office—hiding, as it were, from Howard’s undoubtedly raucous party at the mansion—but around eight o’clock Daniel managed to convince her that his living room was better suited.

To be completely honest, it was the promise of Daniel’s cooking and a good whiskey that won her over, but if he had learned how to lure her in, she ought to cooperate.

And she would admit, from her cozy seat on the couch, that this was a lovely way to end the year. Her hair down, her shoes abandoned under the coffee table. Daniel’s thumbs traced the arch of her foot with just the right pressure.

She thought for a moment. “I wasn’t arrested for treason.”

Daniel gave her a look. “I don’t know if I’d consider that a high point of the year.”

“It was compared to 1946.”

He tickled the sole of her foot until she kicked at him. “I hired someone for the first time,” he offered. “Unfortunately it was Samberly.”

“Daniel,” she chided, but it was hard not to smile when he snickered like that. It was a new laugh—new to her, anyway. One she hadn’t heard before they were together. Not for the first time, she wondered how he had been before the war. No matter how many stories his father told, she would never hear enough.

 _It’s a joy to see Daniel like this,_ he had confided, the night before he left. They had both been banned from the kitchen while Daniel finished cooking, humming idly to himself. _It’s a joy to see him at all, but especially like this._

“Here.” She reached for Daniel’s foot, prompting him to pull it up onto the couch. “We must be fair.”

He switched his attention to her other foot as she untied his shoe. “You know, you’re getting a deal here.” He glanced down at his foot and the corners of his mouth quirked. “Two for one.”

“Oh, I _knew_ it!” Peggy swatted his ankle. “I knew that was going to be terrible.”

Naturally, the telephone had to interrupt them.

Daniel’s laughter tapered into a grumble. “Right when I get comfortable.”

“Shall I answer?” she asked, hoping he wouldn’t take it as an overstep. It grew difficult to tell where those lines lay, as they lived more and more intimately. To know when and where she could say, _honestly, Daniel, if it happens to be easier for me to handle, it makes no sense for you to bother with it._ To know which of his battles he could trust her to fight not out of pity but out of love.

Mopping the floor was one she had recently won.

When the phone rang again, he gestured for her to go ahead.

“Hello?”

“Peggy! Happy New Year.”

“Jack?” She could hear noise in the background, but it was distant.

“I’m heading over to Stark’s in a minute, and I’d love to see ya.”

Peggy actually took the phone away from her ear to squint at it. He didn’t sound particularly drunk. “Are you in Los Angeles?”

“Just catching up with my old man. Great party here with his buddies but I promised I’d make it to Stark’s before midnight.”

At once she understood.

“Actually, we were just on our way there.”

She did her best to keep her tone light and even, but when she said goodbye to Jack she found Daniel tying his shoe with his mission face on.

“He found something,” Daniel presumed.

“Or something’s happened.” Peggy snatched up her heels. “I don’t know what, but he’s at the Council’s party, calling over their line.”

“Something urgent.”

When they arrived at the manor, Jack was already waiting in the shadows at the edge of the drive, and for an instant Peggy had a vision of Mr. Jarvis waiting in an alley. Asking for her help.

“Jack—”

“It’s on a plane.”

“What?” Daniel sidled closer.

Jack was as sober as she had ever seen him. “Whatever that key opens, it’s on a plane. And we have to go _now_.”

Peggy glanced down at her skirt and heels and nodded. “Just let me change. I have a feeling we’ll want to be better armed.”

She led them past the sea of parked cars and around the back, dodging the flood of music and drunken laughter from the main part of the house. Howard was there somewhere, halfway to drowning himself, and she wasn’t thinking about that now. She opened the door to her bedroom and stopped dead.

Gingerly, with the sort of sinuous grace of a tiger snake, Dottie Underwood rose from a crouch.

She lifted her hands slowly outward, doing a quite decent impression of someone who had not just been digging through the bottom of Peggy’s closet. A careless smile lit up her face. “So… _this_ is awkward.”

“That’s one word for it,” Daniel said shortly. Peggy didn’t need to check behind her to know he already had a gun trained on Dottie. Jack did, too.

“Hope I didn’t scratch you too bad at the party, Peg.” Dottie shook her head in innocent disbelief. “You just keep getting in my way.”

“And now you’re in mine.” Peggy crossed carefully to the dresser, watching for any sign of movement, and took her handcuffs from the top drawer. “Jack, I swear, if you say a word.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

The cuffs closed around Dottie’s wrists with a satisfying click. After relieving her of all the weaponry she could find on her person, Peggy stepped back to face her. “What exactly did you intend to find among my shoes?”

“Peggy.” How someone managed to look that haughty with her hands locked behind her back, Peggy would never know. “You’ve only ever seen me after one thing.”

“The Arena Club pin.”

A blank stare.

“You’d already got it at the party.”

Dottie gave her a pitying look. “Oh, Peggy. You need _both_.”

Both keys. Both patterns of teeth. Peggy held out her hand expectantly. “If we need both, give me the other one.”

Jack took a step forward, his gun ready. “Peggy, we don’t have time.” From the look he sent Dottie, Peggy could see him clocking her in the side of the head and taking the key from her unconscious body. As pleasing as that would be to witness…

“You’re right, we don’t.” She gestured to Dottie. “On your knees.”

A slow smile spread over Dottie’s face. Comprehension. “You know where it is. What it opens.”

“On your knees,” Peggy repeated.

“Take me there and I’ll give it to you.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Peggy.” Daniel. Clenching her jaw, she tilted her head in his direction. “We can’t leave her here.”

The noise of the party filtered back into her awareness—and that was why they had found her here tonight, wasn’t it? The security systems were down, the clamor would mask any sounds of her ransacking. A house full of partygoers. Full of innocents. Howard. Mr. Jarvis. Ana.

Damn Daniel for always being right.

“The key first,” she demanded.

Dottie’s smile grew. “It’s in my bra.”

Peggy rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake, is that supposed to faze me?”

It did make the entire process more onerous. When she had both pins, she twisted them open to check. They were exact opposites, long peg and short peg. She glanced at Dottie. “How did you know we didn’t have the same one as you?”

Dottie shrugged blithely, but her eyes were sharp. “Lucky guess.”

“Okay, can we go now?” Jack was a breath away from pacing.

They took Howard’s most anonymous car, Jack driving and Peggy in the backseat with Dottie, not taking her eyes off her even to spare a look out the window when Daniel asked Jack where they were going.

“Since there’s still an eight percent chance of her taking us all out and flying there on her broomstick, I’m going to keep that to myself.” Peggy felt Jack’s eyes on them in the rearview mirror. “It’s a rich guy’s private airfield, we’ll leave it at that.”

“You heard it mentioned at the party?” Peggy asked.

In her peripheral vision, he nodded.

“How long will it be kept there?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, which was answer enough. “Not long.”

 

The hangar reminded her of Howard’s, frosted windows glowing faintly in the dark, although how much variation could one find in private hangars, really. They had been right to leave the car at the end of the road, continuing up on foot. Two guards were posted outside, who fortunately didn’t seem to hear four people, a crutch, a pair of handcuffs, and a small arsenal attempt to crouch in the nearest copse of trees.

Jack hefted the tranquilizer gun. “You’re sure this thing will work?”

“Just ask Jarvis,” Daniel muttered.

“It will work. They mustn’t see our faces.”

“All right then.” Jack leveled the rifle at the first guard and pulled the trigger. The second one went down before he could draw his pistol.

Daniel gave a low whistle.

“One thing I’m good at. Shooting people.” Jack adjusted his grip and shouldered his way out of the bush. “Let’s go.”

“They didn’t exactly leave it heavily guarded,” Daniel commented as they lifted a keyring off one of the men.

“Their security is the plane itself.” Peggy tried and failed to make out anything behind the frosted glass. “Better for them to be in and out and not to be noticed in between.”

“I say we follow their plan,” Jack said, heading for the side entrance. “Problem is, we don’t have eyes in there. So unless they’ve got some real convenient bushes inside that door, they’re going to see at least one of us.”

“Me.”

“No,” Peggy and Daniel said simultaneously.

Dottie rolled her eyes so hard they nearly disappeared. “It’s the obvious plan.”

“No,” Peggy repeated.

They held a silent standoff until the hoot of an owl made three out of four of them jump.

“It is the obvious plan,” Jack admitted.

Peggy let out her breath in a huff. “I’m not removing the handcuffs.”

Dottie shot her a smirk. “Well, that wouldn’t be any fun, now would it?”

“Her definition of fun,” Daniel said under his breath after she slipped through the door. He fell in behind Peggy, Jack guarding the rear as they continued in Dottie’s wake.

Peggy lost sight of her almost immediately in the shadowy hangar, a vast space that would appear deserted if they didn’t know better, but she told herself to simply prepare for anything on that front.

 _You can never be fully prepared for me_ , Dottie countered in her head, but she shook it away when a muffled grunt sounded somewhere to their right, followed by the slithery thump of a body slumping onto concrete.

Dottie materialized at their side with an unnerving grin. “All done.”

“I do hope you didn’t kill him.” Peggy turned to Jack before Dottie could confirm or deny. “Which one is it?” Four planes loomed over them, all fairly nondescript.

“They didn’t say. But I think we’re looking for a cabin,” Jack said, bypassing the open cockpit.

Peggy stopped in front of a larger one when she noticed the name painted in stark black letters along the tail. “What if the A on the pin doesn’t stand for Arena Club?”

Jack came over to see, pulling Dottie by the elbow. “ _Apotheosis._ ”

“Sounds about right,” Daniel remarked.

“What does it mean?” Peggy asked. “ _Theo_ as in—”

“God,” Jack finished. “Glorification, elevation to god status.”

“That does sound about right.”

“Who knew all those years of Latin would be good for something.”

When they managed to get inside, Peggy felt even more certain that they had found the right one. The glossy wood, the gold accents, the scent of cigars clinging to the leather seats. The interior was dim, only weak light from the hangar filtering in the windows, but they each had a torch. She and Daniel combed over the cabin from front to back, leaving Jack to handle Dottie.

“They certainly have a particular taste,” Peggy noted as she checked under the plush seats. “This reminds me of the room in the Arena Club.”

“Were you on your hands and knees there as well?” Dottie asked.

Peggy made a face at the underside of an armrest. “Yes, I was, attempting not to be shot, thank you.”

“Carter’s better at not getting shot than me. Rebar, not so great.” Jack clicked his tongue. “That’s what I hear, anyway.”

She wondered if leaving those two together had created some kind of odious osmosis between them. “Big words coming from someone rather intimately acquainted with a table.”

“Hey, that was not ‘intimate.’”

Dottie snickered.

“You know what—”

“Hush.” At a break in the rows of seats, Peggy’s light fell on a suspiciously blank wood panel. “Daniel, does this look like it should open?”

He ran a gloved hand over the surface. “Look for a lever or something.”

The crank that appeared to draw a shade over the nearest window did not. The panel slid smoothly down to reveal two symmetrical keyholes, with a smaller one between them.

Peggy prodded the mysterious middle slot first. “Neither of these keys will fit here.”

“Well, do they fit _beside_ it?” Jack asked impatiently. At some point, he and Dottie had moved closer, practically peering over her shoulder.

“You have to turn them both at once,” Dottie added, because she knew far too much about all of this.

Peggy held up her torch to examine the mismatched teeth. “How do we know which goes where?”

Dottie flicked an eyebrow, unconcerned. “Guess. I don’t think it would be in their best interest to rig this to self-destruct.”

Peggy passed one of the keys to Daniel, letting her hand linger on his for a moment. His gaze mirrored what she felt—the fraught anticipation, the hesitant curl of triumph, the whisper of fear.The cabin itself seemed to hold its breath as they silently counted to three.

“…Well, shit.”

Peggy stared down into the trunk-like compartment, tempted to echo Jack. Scarcely believing. “This is everything.”

Files, photographs, newspaper clippings, rows upon rows of tape recordings. All of those labeled by date—the Council’s meeting records Rufus Hunt had sent them after. It was all here.

“We can bring them down,” she whispered.

The words seeped into the leather and wood, filled with so much promise. So much hope they hadn’t even dared to keep.

“Yeah, and how?”

She blinked at Jack, but he looked completely serious. She waved her light at the stash, flashing against white paper. “All of this. Even a fraction of this would be enough.”

“And how.”

She looked at him, uncomprehending, and he sighed.

“We take this.” He rose to his feet and settled back in the first seat facing them, sprawling on it like a throne. “Us—middle management of an irrelevant government program that’s two steps from the chopping block. And we take it to who—the department, with Matthias Corse? Congress, with Willard Addison?” His fist clenched on the armrest. “Peggy, people get disappeared for less.”

Peggy took a steadying breath. “Then we’ll hold onto it until we know we can win.”

“Yeah?” Jack propped one ankle up on his knee. “They’re already gonna know someone broke in. If we take this now, they’ll know why. And how many stops do you think they’ll make before they decide to check on that mouthy Agent Carter?”

“Jack.”

“No, he’s right, Daniel.” Peggy pressed her lips together. “And no matter how it happened, I would bring you down with me, and I can’t bear that.”

“ _Awww._ ”

“Can it, Underwood.” Jack directed his attention to Peggy, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “We know about the plane now. And if we find someone we can trust high enough up the chain—”

“ _When_ we do.”

He relented. “When we do—”

“Uh, guys?” Daniel’s tone caught her attention. She turned to find his torch fixed on the wall beside the open compartment. “You want to see this.”

A second panel had slid back with the first, exposing a row of identical keyholes.

Nine.

A buzzing ring made them all start. Peggy lifted her wrist, her torch shining off the watch face. “Midnight.”

They sat in silence as the abyss in front of them shrank into nine keyholes, each no less vast.

“Well, I can tell you one thing,” Jack said finally. “It’s gonna be a year.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who's still reading, I don't know if I can hope to be worth a 3 month wait, but I hope you enjoyed this one. If you did, let me know, it means a lot. <3
> 
> So this is the end of Part I. I hope to write Part II when I have the time, but I will not be posting any of it until the whole fic is finished. No more hanging WIP!
> 
> And so, for now, thank you for reading.
> 
> l0g0phile is a magnificent beast who betas even on Benadryl.


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